Abstract：Abstract: This study aims to explore the processing mechanism of English regular and irregular verbs by Chinese EFL learners. Based on an online lexical decision task, the roles of frequency and regularity in the processing of regular and irregular verbs were investigated. The results showed that the irregular verbs and high-frequency regular verbs were processed with memory and low-frequency regular verbs with computation. Both frequency and regularity played a role in the processing of English regular and irregular verbs, but English proficiency did not. The findings further support the Dual Mechanism Theory.
Key words: regular/irregular verbs, processing mechanism, dual mechanism, frequency, regularity
