Lexical Availability in English and Spanish as a Second Language

✍ Scribed by Humberto López Morales (auth.), Rosa María Jiménez Catalán (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 213
• Series: Educational Linguistics 17
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

​ This volume contributes to the research in two different research areas: lexical availability studies and vocabulary research in second or foreign languages. Lexical availability is defined as the words that immediately come to mind as a response to a stimulus provided by topics related to domains closely connected to daily life: for instance animals, food and drink, daily activities, politics, or poverty. Lexical availability is a dimension of learners’ receptive and productive lexical competence, and, consequently, an important variable of learners’ communicative competence. Written by leading researchers in Spanish and English applied linguistics, the studies presented in this volume offer the reader findings and insights from studies conducted in learners with different mother tongues, who learn English or Spanish as their second or third language. “This book made me aware of an approach to vocabulary acquisition which has a long tradition in European research, but has been somewhat neglected by English-speaking researchers. The methodology was pioneered in France where it developed into the Francais Fondamental project - an influential approach to the vocabulary needs of learners of French. It was also taken up by Spanish researchers, and more recently developed by the team at La Rioja University. Where English-language research has focused on the frequency of words in large corpora and the implications of this feature for L2 vocabulary acquisition, the lexical availability tradition takes a much more learner-centred approach to L2 vocabulary skills, directly reflecting learners' needs and learners' ability to do things with small, effective vocabularies. This leads to a set of research priorities that look refreshingly different from the ones we are used to. Read this book. It might change the way you think about vocabulary research.” Paul Meara, Swansea University, Wales, UK

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xiv
Lexical Availability Studies....Pages 1-11
Front Matter....Pages 13-13
Lexical Availability of Basic and Advanced Semantic Categories in English L1 and English L2....Pages 15-35
The Effect of Age on EFL Learners’ Lexical Availability: Word Responses to the Cue Words ‘Town’ and ‘Countryside’....Pages 37-51
The Incidence of Previous Foreign Language Contact in a Lexical Availability Task: A Study of Senior Learners....Pages 53-68
Lexical Variation in Learners’ Responses to Cue Words: The Effect of Gender....Pages 69-81
Frequency Profiles of EFL Learners’ Lexical Availability....Pages 83-100
Front Matter....Pages 101-101
The Relationship of Language Proficiency to the Lexical Availability of Learners of Spanish....Pages 103-124
Slovene Students’ Lexical Availability in English and Spanish....Pages 125-138
The Effect of Instruction on Polish Spanish Learners’ Lexical Availability....Pages 139-168
Cognitive Factors of Lexical Availability in a Second Language....Pages 169-186
Front Matter....Pages 187-187
Researching Lexical Availability in L2: Some Methodological Issues....Pages 189-205

✦ Subjects

Language Education; Applied Linguistics; Literacy; Psycholinguistics