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The Relationship of Language Proficiency to the Lexical Availability of Learners of Spanish
Abstract
In a classical study under PanHispanic research, the author performs detailed descriptive analyses on the lexical availability output of Spanish foreign language learners. These were distributed on the basis of their language proficiency level on Spanish: basic and advanced. In her study, advanced learners produced a larger number of words than learners in the basic group, in practically all the cue words under examination. The exceptions were ‘The City’ and ‘Games and Entertainment’, where learners at the basic level either outperformed learners at the advanced level or behaved in a similar way. Results for these cue words show that a higher language level does not always result in a higher number of words. Other factors such as the kind of instruction, course input, or learners’ experiences should be taken into account.
... in Puerto Rico, which included important contributions to the theoretical and methodological systematisation of LA research(Fernández Smith et al., 2012). In particular, within a Spanish-speaking context, LópezMorales (1973) developed the Panhispanic Project of Available Lexicon, which aimed to analyse the available lexicon of non-specialised adult speakers in their final year of school before starting a degree(Samper Hernández, 2014). This research has provided guidelines for carrying out LA tests, allowing numerous researchers to carry out investigations which are methodologically homogeneous, and thus allowing for the comparison of results across different research(Fernández Smith et al., 2012), and from different points of view such as cognition, pedagogy, and language learning. ...
Over the last two decades, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become widely implemented throughout Spain, with the hope of enhancing foreign-language abilities and encouraging multilingualism (Ruiz de Zarobe & Lasagabaster, 2010). However, there has been such enthusiasm for the approach that its implementation has largely outpaced research into its effectiveness (Pérez-Cañado, 2012). In particular, there are four key issues which need to be addressed: the language of instruction, the acquisition of vocabulary, the learners’ motivation, and the influence of gender. Firstly, the vast majority of CLIL programmes throughout Spain are taught through the medium of English, prompting the use of the term CEIL (content-and-English integrated learning) (Dalton-Puffer, 2011). However, several schools also implement programmes through other important target languages (TLs) such as French (Ruiz de Zarobe & Lasagabaster, 2010). These languages other than English, however, have largely been neglected, both in research and practice. Within CLIL research Dalton-Puffer, Nikula and Smit (2010) have consequently called for comparative research across different TLs, so as to provide insight into the strengths and weaknesses of CLIL language-independently. Secondly, CLIL modules have been shown to produce positive effects on students' learning of content-related vocabulary (Heras & Lasagabaster, 2015). Within the field of lexical availability (LA), there have been recent calls to better understand this effect, by focusing on LA prompts which may be relevant to the CLIL subject and by including some measure of proficiency in order to determine its influence (Canga Alonso, 2017). Thirdly, motivation is well understood as an undeniably important factor in learning a foreign language (FL) and has been found to play a more significant role in CLIL than in non-CLIL settings (Navarro & García Jiménez, 2018). However, there may be a fundamental difference between the motivation for learning English compared with other languages, given that English is increasingly regarded as a basic educational skill, crucial to professional development (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2013). There is thus a clear need to investigate CLIL language learning motivation in English as compared to other TLs, so as to determine whether the benefits hold true for languages other than English. Finally, research into gender and LA in Spain has largely shown a female advantage in younger learners and in early secondary school students. However, more research is needed to understand whether this advantage remains in later school years, and whether CLIL instruction plays a role. Female students have also generally been found to exhibit higher language learning motivation, however, there are suggestions that a CLIL context may provide a blurring effect of gender differences (Lasagabaster, 2008), given the assumption that male students may compensate for lower FL learning motivation with higher motivation towards the CLIL subject (Heras & Lasagabaster, 2015). However, research to date has produced mixed findings on whether this is in fact the case. To address these gaps, this thesis aims to analyse the LA and language learning motivation of secondary school students enrolled simultaneously in English and French CLIL, exploring the influence of the language of instruction, the role of gender, and the effect of CLIL on these different factors. The participants are native Spanish speakers from 9th, 10th and 11th grade who in addition to studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and French as a Foreign Language (FFL) also study content subjects through the medium of these languages. The study adopts both a cross-sectional (9th to 10th grade) and longitudinal (10th to 11th grade) approach, with participants completing language level C-tests, LA tasks and language learning motivation questionnaires both in English and French. Results point to clear differences between participants’ LA and language learning motivation in English and French, to the advantage of English. In terms of LA, exposure to content-related vocabulary was found to influence the results from one grade to the next, and language level was found to play a clear role. Regarding motivation, in addition to reporting greater motivation towards English, there was a much stronger relationship between LA and motivation and between language level and motivation in English than in French. There were also indications that attitudes toward CLIL classes may play a vital role. In terms of gender, female students were found to produce a higher number of words than male students, however, there are indications that male students may exhibit greater lexical sophistication in terms of LA. While male and female students were equally motivated towards learning English, clearer differences arose in French. Finally, CLIL instruction was also found to play a very important role in the acquisition of content-related vocabulary. In particular, results revealed that CLIL has the potential to help students improve their LA to the extent that they can effectively bridge the gap between them and students with a higher language level and greater LA in other domains.
... Studies dealing with L2 Spanish are quite scarce (Carcedo González, 1998a;López Rivero, 2008;Samper Hernández, 2002;Šifrar Kalan, 2009; among others) and, specifically, those dealing with L2 English are even more limited (Germany & Cartes, 2000;Jiménez Catalán & Ojeda Alba, 2009, even though the recent monograph edited by Jiménez Catalán (2014) has tried to fill this gap by joining both L2 Spanish and L2 English research in the same volume. Those studies dealing with lexical availability in L2 Spanish and L2 English have examined the incidence of variables such as age (Jiménez Catalán, Agustín Llach, Fernández Fontecha & Canga Alonso, 2014), gender (Agustín , proficiency level (Samper Hernández, 2014), and instruction (López González, 2014), among others. ...
p>This paper explores whether language typology plays any role in lexical availability and spelling accuracy in L2 English. Two groups of adult speakers were compared: a group of native speakers of a language typologically distant from English with a logographic writing system (Chinese; n=13) vs. a group of native speakers of a language typologically closer to English with an alphabetic system (Spanish; n=14). All participants performed a lexical availability task (Carcedo González, 1998a) which was later on analyzed in terms of the ‘total number of words’ and the ‘total number of words containing spelling mistakes’ per each of the 15 semantic categories included. Spanish speakers displayed larger available lexica and fewer spelling mistakes than Chinese speakers, an outcome which would confirm the positive influence of L1-L2 proximity on L2 lexical availability and the deleterious effect of having a non-alphabetic L1 writing system on L2 spelling accuracy. </p
Lexical availability studies provide valuable insights into learners’ breadth and depth of controlled productive vocabulary, and structure of their lexicon. Yet, little is known about the performance of different-L1 learners on different prompts. Likewise, this study compared the available lexicon of three different-L1 groups of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) (L1-Persian, L1-Arabic, and L1-Turkish) to explore whether first language (L1) background and type of prompt (concrete vs. abstract) yield quantitative and qualitative differences in retrieving available lexicon. An online New Vocabulary Levels Test and a lexical availability task were administered to 116 tertiary different-L1 EFL learners. Studying concrete and abstract prompts would uncover the intricate cognitive processes in word processing and retrieval, and semantic organization. The findings revealed that both L1 background and type of prompt impacted their lexical availability output, resulting in differences between the groups in the words generated for different prompts on the task. L1-Persian learners outperformed L1-Arabic and L1-Turkish learners in terms of number and quality of the words for the task. Moreover, the type of prompt meaningfully interacted with L1 background in eliciting words on the task; the three groups differed in word retrieval on both prompts but generated more words on concrete, than abstract, prompts. Thus, EFL teachers and materials developers can improve vocabulary instruction via considering L1 background in selecting or designing teaching materials or syllabi. Additionally, more tasks with abstract words would increase exposure to such words, and thus their ease in retrieval.
This paper examines the implications of the association patterns in our understanding of the mental lexicon. By applying the principles of graph theory to word association data, we intend to explore which measures tap better into lexical knowledge. To that end, we had different groups of English as Foreign language learners complete a lexical fluency task. Based on these empirical data, a study was undertaken on the corresponding lexical availability graph (LAG). It is observed that the aggregation (mentioned through human coding) of all lexical tokens on a given topic allows the emergence of some lexical-semantic patterns. The most important one is the existence of some key terms, featuring both high centrality in the sense of network theory and high availability in the LAG, which define a hub of related terms. These communities of words, each one organized around an anchor term, or most central word, are nicely apprehended by a well-known network metric called modularity. Interestingly enough, each module seems to describe a conceptual class, showing that the collective lexicon, at least as approximated by LA Graphs, is organised and traversed by semantic mechanisms or associations via hyponymy or hiperonymy, for instance. Another empirical observation is that these conceptual hubs can be appended, resulting in high diameters compared to same-sized random graphs; even so it seems that the small-world hypothesis holds in LA Graphs, as in other social and natural networks.
The present paper offers a study of the influence of age co-occurring with school grade and L2 proficiency on vocabulary production. Previous studies in classroom contexts confirmed that learners’ lexical performance changes over time as their knowledge of L2 develops. Specifically, vocabulary becomes wider and more varied with time. In lexical availability studies, in particular, age, school grade, and L2 proficiency have been found to be significant variables. Here, we had 196 EFL learners of two different school grades (with corresponding ages and L2 proficiency levels) complete a lexical availability task: verbal fluency task to look into their vocabulary production and lexicon organization. Responses were analyzed against the framework of graph theory, together with descriptive tests. The results reveal that older learners produce more words, less frequent words, and words belonging to higher proficiency bands; differences between them and younger learners were very small, however. A more interesting result was brought to light by graph metrics, which reveal that learners in both groups used a category-ridden lexicon organization. Older learners display more single connections among peripheral words, giving rise to more disperse semantic networks approaching the structure found in native mental lexicons.
en Studies on lexical availability (LA) reveal a different dimension of vocabulary knowledge and development. Likewise, this study explores (a) the relationship between LA and writing ability of male and female learners and (b) differences and similarities between the tokens and types of the words they generated. An LA task and a composition test were administered to 100 (50 males and 50 females) EFL learners. The results highlight a positive correlation between LA and the writing scores for both males and females. Frequency analyses and t‐test results also show no differences between male and female learners in terms of tokens and types of the retrieved words. Thus, lexical availability studies can provide similar pedagogical implications in instructing writing skill for both male and female EFL learners.
ملخص
ar مطالعات دسترسیِ واژگانی، جنبه ای متفاوت از دانش و توسعه واژگان را نمایان می سازد. در این راستا، پژوهش حاضر ارتباط بین لغاتِ در دسترس و مهارت نگارش فراگیرانِ زبان انگلیسی و همچنین تفاوت ها و شباهت های بین زبان آموزانِ مرد و زن از لحاظ تعداد و نوع کلماتِ در دسترسی که تولید کرده اند را مورد بررسی قرار می دهد. برای گردآوری داده های پژوهش، از شرکت کنندگان که در مجموع 100 نفر (50 نفر مرد و 50 نفر زن) بودند دو آزمون، یعنی انشا و فعالیت مربوط به لغاتِ در دسترس، به عمل آمد. نتایج بدست آمده نشان می دهد که بین دسترسیِ واژگانی و مهار ت نوشتاریِ زبان آموزان، رابطه مثبتی وجود دارد. به علاوه، نتایج آزمون تی و توزیع فراوانی نشان می دهد که به لحاظ تعداد و نوع کلماتِ در دسترس، تفاوتی میان زبان آموزان مرد و زن وجود ندارد. بنابراین، مطالعات دسترسیِ واژگانی می تواند در آموزش مهارت نگارش به هر دو گروه زبان آموز مرد و زن، اثرات آموزشی مشابهی را به بار آورد.
RESUMEN Son ya muy numerosos los estudios de disponibilidad léxica realizados sobre la lengua materna
de una comunidad. Sin embargo, su aplicación a la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras apenas se ha investigado. Este artículo, fruto de una investigación en la que se ha estudiado el léxico disponible de los estudiantes de español como lengua extranjera de la Universidad de Cádiz y los factores que le influyen, analiza el efecto del nivel de español sobre el número de unidades léxicas que se han actualizado en las encuestas de disponibilidad. Además, hace especial hincapié en la importancia de que se lleve a cabo, no solo un análisis estadístico descriptivo de los resultados, sino también inductivo, el cual permite extrapolarlos a la totalidad del grupo de estudiantes que es objeto del estudio.
En el estudio que presentamos, realizamos una muestra diagnóstica a las investigaciones sobre disponibilidad léxica de un total de doscientos sesenta y tres estudiantes chinos provenientes de las ciudades de Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Chongqing y Luoyang, lugares que en nuestro estudio han servido como representantes respectivamente del sur, el norte, el este y el centro del país. Los resultados nos permitirán detectar deficiencias que presentan los estudiantes chinos en el nivel léxico durante el aprendizaje de español como lengua extranjera y así, se plantean estrategias que les podrán ayudar a enfrentar los problemas existentes y al mismo tiempo se nos ofrecerán materiales de primera mano en el campo de la enseñanza del léxico.
Las mejoras en el enfoque y los procedimientos de cálculo producidos en los últimos trabajos de disponibilidad léxica descubren un campo de aplicaciones considerable, entre los que la enseñanza de la lengua a extranjeros se revela, sin duda, como importante beneficiaria. En este trabajo presentamos los resultados obtenidos con un test de disponibilidad realizado a alumnos finlandeses en cuatro diferentes fases del aprendizaje de español como lengua extranjera. La comparación de los datos cuantitativos y cualitativos obtenidos para los diferentes niveles permite extraer conclusiones importantes para la programación curricular y atisbar otras que podremos confirmar cuando hayamos incrementado convenientemente el volumen estadístico utilizado para el estudio
Universidad de Turku (Finlandia) BIBLID [0213-2370 (1998) 14.2; 205-224] En nuestro artículo, junto a consideraciones sobre disponibilidad léxica, y un repaso a las investigaciones sobre este tema en el ámbito del español, postulamos las ventajas que ese tipo de pruebas pueden reportar en la en-señanza de la lengua a extranjeros, y exponemos los datos de un estudio de diagnóstico sobre disponibilidad léxica de alumnos finlandeses de español del último año de bachillerato. Based on initial considerations on lexical availability and on a general view to studies in Spanish language, we vuant to indícate here in this arrí-ele the advantages which this kind of tests can bring to thefield offoreign language teaching. Furthermore, we explain the results of a diagnostic study on lexical availability ofFinnish students of Spanish language on their last schoolyear befare the baccalaureate.
Aportaciones recientes de los estudios de disponibilidad léxica. LynX: Panorámica de estudios lingüísticos 5
- J A Samper
- M Samper Hernández
Disponibilidad léxica en español como lengua extranjera: el caso finlandés
- A Carcedo
La estructura estadística del léxico disponible de informantes nativos e informantes de ELE
- M V Galloso
- J Prado
Las nociones específicas del PCIC y la disponibilidad léxica como instrumento de selección del vocabulario. Final master’s report
- E Medina Arejita
Estudio de disponibilidad léxica en estudiantes de E/LE en los centros de interés “Medios de transporte” y “Profesiones y oficios”. Final master’s report
- Pérez Serrano
Criterios de edición del léxico disponible
- J A Samper
- JA Samper
Dificultades de los estudios de disponibilidad léxica en ELE: los criterios de edición de los materiales
- Samper Hernández
Disponibilidad léxica en español como lengua extranjera de los alumnos rumanos Estudio exploratorio. Diploma of Advanced Studies’ report
- B Sandu
Estudio de disponibilidad léxica en 43 estudiantes de ELE. Final master’s report
- López Rivero
García de las Heras Cálculo de la disponibilidad léxica
- F Moreno
- J Enrique Moreno
Evolución de la disponibilidad léxica en estudiantes grancanarios de enseñanza primaria y secundaria
- Samper Hernández
Disponibilidad léxica en alumnos de español como lengua extranjera
- Samper Hernández
El proyecto panhispánico de disponibilidad léxica y los cotejos dialectales
- J A Samper
- M Samper
- Hernández
- JA Samper
Aportaciones recientes de los estudios de disponibilidad léxica
- J A Samper
- M Samper
- Hernández
- JA Samper