Volume 56, Issue 1 -

This study analyses the relationship between receptive vocabulary size in upper-intermediate/advanced learners and EFL proficiency and the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Little research has been conducted on this dimension of lexical knowledge and the four skills (Staehr, 2008; Milton et al., 2010), in spite of the fact that previous studies of separate language skills have highlighted the importance of vocabulary size for language proficiency development. A sample of 42 participants was assessed by means of a receptive vocabulary size test on ten word-frequency levels (1k to 10k), and on both receptive and productive skills (oral and written). Results reveal that vocabulary size explains language proficiency to a large extent, even in learners with vocabularies of more than 5,000 words, though its influence on performance is not as strong as in learners with smaller vocabularies. At a high proficiency level, vocabulary size is closely linked to writing and is moderately correlated with reading, speaking and listening. The findings help to provide a more complete picture than earlier research by including more proficient learners in EFL settings.

The present paper examines the lexical profiles of children and adult EFL learners in an attempt to untangle the roles of age and hours of exposure and their effect on lexical knowledge. Both age and exposure time have generally been acknowledged as relevant factors influencing foreign language acquisition, and vocabulary learning specifically. Participants in the study, who share the same amount of exposure to the target language but differ in age, were asked to write an informal letter introducing themselves. Their letters were scrutinized and mean production of tokens and types was found together with word frequencies and some lexical inconsistencies. In addition, the children participating in the study were enrolled in a CLIL program to match their hours of instruction with those of the adults. Their lexical profiles are characterized by fewer tokens and types and words of lower frequency related to the fields of school, home and science, the CLIL subject. They also use more cognates and commit more lexical inconsistencies than adult learners, who in turn produce more general words in longer letters. We interpret our results in light of the relevant role of age and instructional program.

This study investigates whether sequences in which grammar topics are presented in textbooks for German as a foreign language (henceforth GFL) match empirically determined, universal acquisition sequences. Moreover, it explores what patterns course books display regarding a set of grammar structures that are particularly interesting from an L1-perspective. From the literature we know that some grammar phenomena such as verb placement display a general acquisition pattern irrespective of the learners’ L1. In addition, we find L1-specific research such as studies on the acquisition of case assignment for Dutch learners of German. The current study considers a range of Dutch, Finnish, and global textbooks for young adolescent learners (13–15 years) at a beginner level to identify the sequence in which they introduce simple and complex verbal structures, tense, case, and pronouns. Across all these domains, the results display mainly similarities. When differences are found, these are often related to language-specific characteristics of the L1 and the typological distance between the L1 and L2 German, namely when Finns learn German pronouns and separable verbs. Overall, the analyzed teaching materials introduce the majority of the grammar issues in accord with the acquisition sequences but more L1-specific empirical research is necessary. We argue that analyses of grammar sequences in textbooks can be used as input for both SLA/FLA empirical research and theory development, especially concerning the teachability of grammar.

It has been widely recognized in the field of second language acquisition that language learners tend to struggle with the acquisition of articles when their first languages (L1) do not have a similar linguistic system. Thus, various L1 effects on the usage of articles have been studied. In this context, the present study examined how the same L1 (i. e., Korean) would influence article usage in two different languages (i. e., English and Spanish). Specifically, advanced learners of English and advanced learners of Spanish performed a task of consecutive interpreting from Korean to English and Spanish, respectively, and their article usage patterns in English and Spanish were analyzed for comparison. The results show that both groups exhibited high levels of accuracy in the use of English and Spanish articles while major error types were article omission and article misuse, which can be partly attributed to L1 effects. As for differences, the participants in the English group tended to employ other determiners instead of articles, such as possessives, quantifiers, and demonstratives. In Spanish, the tendency to over-use definite articles was stronger than the English group. These differences may be related to certain consecutive interpreting strategies as well as differences in pedagogical approaches of teaching English and Spanish in Korea. Detailed patterns in the use of articles in English and Spanish are compared, and their implications are discussed.