The Impact of Frequency on Words’ Mental Storage: A Study on Arab Speakers of English as a Second Language

The presented study investigates the effect of frequency on the mental lexicon representation of English words. The study targets Arabic native speakers, who speak English as a second language. To test the hypothesized relation of frequency and words’ storage, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to ten Arabs speaking English as a second language. The questionnaire was designed for the participants to rate how two pairs of words, complex words and their roots, are related in meaning. The words were divided into two groups, frequent and infrequent words. The findings revealed a significant difference in the responses between the two groups of words. This difference was in favor of the frequent words, which can be used as an indicator that users’ mental lexicon stores frequent words of their second language as complex word forms, not separate morphemes.