Factors Predicting Low-Intermediate French Learners’ Vocabulary Use in Speaking Tasks (original) (raw)

Knowledge and use of the lexicon in French as a second language

2008

This special issue of JFLS focuses on what learners know about French words, on how they use that knowledge and on how it can be investigated and assessed. In many ways, it is a sequel to the special issue on the Acquisition of French as a Second Language edited by Myles and Towell that appeared in JFLS in 2004. While articles on the L2 acquisition of the French lexicon have appeared in a variety of journals, including JFLS, this special issue (SI) is the first volume which specifically focuses on lexical knowledge and use among learners of French as a second language. The issue is timely, because of the growing importance of vocabulary in the SLA research agenda, but also because research into vocabulary acquisition appears at the top of a list of areas in which teachers of Modern Foreign Languages are most interested (Macaro, 2003: 6). Over the past few decades interest in research into Second Language Acquisition has grown exponentially, as can be seen in the number of textbooks and handbooks that have appeared in recent years (Ritchie and Bhatia, 1996; Cook, 1996 et seq.; Doughty and Long, 2001; Myles and Mitchell, 2004), as well as in the formulation of new theories of SLA, such as Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998), Acquisition by Processing Theory (Truscott and Sharwood Smith, 2004) and the Extended Competition Model (MacWhinney, 2005), which complement approaches to SLA that are based on Universal Grammar. As Myles and Mitchell (2004: 91) put it, approaches to SLA which are based on Universal Grammar, have mainly focused on describing and explaining morphosyntactic development in learners, and much less on other aspects of the linguistic system. In the Minimalist Program, however, the differences between languages are seen to be mainly lexical in nature. According to Cook (1998), the Minimalist Program is lexically-driven in that the properties 269 The M4 Applied Linguistics Network of lexical items shape the sentence rather than lexical items being slotted into pre-existent structures. As a result, the task the L1 learner faces is mainly one of learning the lexicon (lexical and functional items), which then triggers the setting of universal grammatical parameters. This approach is reflected in the Lexical Learning Hypothesis (Ellis, 1997) according to which vocabulary knowledge is indispensable to acquire grammar (see also Bates and Goodman, 1997). There are many reasons why understanding how words are learned and used and how we can measure that knowledge is also crucially important for researchers working in Applied Linguistics, in particular for those with an interest in Education. As Milton (this volume) points out, vocabulary knowledge can be quantified in ways that other aspects of language knowledge cannot, which makes this area particularly attractive for the development of indices and measures that can be used in a variety of educational (and clinical) contexts to assess learners' or patients' language profiles. The importance of vocabulary has been demonstrated in a wide range of studies. It is widely accepted that lexical knowledge is one of the main prerequisites for academic achievement of monolingual and bilingual children (see Daller, 1999; Dickinson and Tabors, 2001). According to Meara and Bell (2001), teachers' judgements of L2 texts appear to be based to a large extent on the type of vocabulary used by the students. In a similar vein, Malvern and Richards (2002) show that teachers' subjective rating of students' range of vocabulary in oral interviews correlated very highly (all values above 0.97) with their judgements about fluency, complexity, content and accuracy. The language threshold for reading is also largely lexical. Anderson and Freebody (1981) report a high correlation between tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension across a range of studies in first language reading research. Laufer (1992) points to similar results for second language acquisition. She also provides evidence that for text comprehension a vocabulary large enough to provide coverage of 95% of the words in a text is needed. Hu and Nation (2000) even put the boundary for unassisted reading at 98%. A focus on vocabulary can also provide new insights into the distinction between implicit and explicit learning (Ellis, 1994; Hulstijn, 2003). Recent research has focused on incidental vocabulary, i.e. vocabulary that second language learners develop while they are focused on a task other than on learning new words (Gass, 1999). Most scholars agree that except for the first few thousand most common words, L2 vocabulary is predominantly acquired incidentally (cf. Huckin and Coady, 1999). If this is correct, there are important implications for the ways in which vocabulary is offered in language classes and textbooks. The role of explicit versus implicit (or incidental) vocabulary learning is also taken up in two contributions to this special issue (Houten, Bulté, Pierrard and Van Daele; Graham, Richards and Malvern). Much less is known with respect to the pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge about individual items, i.e. information about the ways in which particular words are used dependent on the formality of the conversation, the characteristics of the interlocutors and the topic of the conversation. How L2 learners acquire pragmatic 'O' level in the past. This enormous decline is probably due to pressure to increase the numbers taking and passing the examination, as well as to a reduction in the classroom hours available for learning, and a change in the examination format. Milton also reports about the receptive vocabulary of 66 students taking single and joint honours French at a British university using the same testing methodology.

Investigating lexical proficiency development over time

This article aims (a) to explore the operationalisation and definition of lexical L2 proficiency and related constructs with a view to identifying a set of measures that can adequately capture the dynamics of lexical L2 proficiency development over time, and (b) to shed more light on the development of lexical proficiency in French Foreign Language classes. After a discussion of theoretical, terminological and methodological issues in L2 vocabulary research, we present a longitudinal quantitative study of the lexical development of Dutch-speaking adolescents learning FFL in Dutch-medium schools in Brussels over a three-year period and compare these learners' lexical proficiency in French to native speaker benchmarks.

Investigating lexical proficiency development over time – the case of Dutch-speaking learners of French in Brussels

Journal of French Language Studies, 2008

ASPECTS OF LEXICAL SOPHISTICATION IN ADVANCED LEARNERS'ORAL PRODUCTION

Studies in Second …, 2012

Abstract This article reports on the design and use of a profiler for lexical sophistication (ie, use of advanced vocabulary), which was created to assess the lexical richness of intermediate and advanced Swedish second language (L2) learners' French and Italian. It ...

Vocabulary Skills of French Immersion Students in their Second Language

1999

Vocabulary knowledge is known to be crucial for reading comprehension and for dealing wit h academic content in a second language (e.g., Garcia, 1991; Hazenberg and Hulstijn, 1996; Laufer, 1992; Nation, 1993). In French immersion programs, where much of the school curriculum is taught in the second language, an important issue therefore conc erns students' lexical development in French. With the current emphasis in schools on using educationally enriching, authentic French content in regular 'core' French programs as we ll, lexical development is of primary importance in this context too. Indeed, numerous recent publications addressed to language teachers and applied linguists concerned with l arners in a wide variety of contexts (e.g., Coady and Huckin, 1997; Harley, 1995; Hatch and Brown, 1995; Nation, 1990; Huckin, Haynes, and Coady, 1993; Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997; Singleton, 1999) signal growing recognition of the key role of vocabulary knowledge in the development...

Vocabulary development in a CLIL context: A comparison between French and English L2

Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2020

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has expanded in Europe, favored by the large body of research, often showing positive effects of CLIL on L2 development. However, critical voices have recently questioned whether these positive findings apply to any language, given that most research focuses on English. Taking into account this concern, the present study investigated the (productive and receptive) vocabulary development in L2 English and L2 French of the same group of learners within a CLIL context. The aim was not to evaluate the benefits of CLIL over non-CLIL, but, instead, to examine whether vocabulary gains in CLIL learning are language-dependent. More specifically, this study included 75 Flemish eight-grade pupils who had CLIL lessons in both English and French. The results show that although the pupils have a larger English vocabulary, the level of improvement (from pretest to posttest) is not different across the languages. The findings indicate that within CLIL...

Exploring the relationship between productive vocabulary knowledge and second language oral ability

The current study investigated the extent to which L2 learners’ productive vocabulary knowledge could predict multiple dimensions of spontaneous speech production. A total of 39 EFL participants with varying L2 proficiency levels first completed a productive vocabulary knowledge task (Lex30). Their spontaneous speech, elicited via a series of picture description task, was then assessed for comprehensibility (i.e., ease of understanding), accentedness (i.e., linguistic nativelikeness), and fluency (i.e., speech rate). The findings showed that the productive vocabulary scores significantly correlated with L2 fluency, but not with comprehensibility or accentedness. Such results might indicate that more proficient L2 learners, as indicated by their productive vocabulary scores, might be able to speak spontaneously without too many pauses and repetitions, and at a faster tempo. Finally, future research directions will be discussed with a focus on the relationships between vocabulary knowledge and speaking.

Factors Predicting Low-Intermediate French Learners’ Vocabulary Use in Speaking Tasks (original) (raw)

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