A Comparison of English Vocabulary in the Spoken Production of One Non-native Long-residency Group, One Non-native University Group and One Native Group in Three Tasks

Abstract

This study investigates the rate of high-and low-frequency words, types and tokens, in L2 spoken English by two advanced Swedish groups, one studying English at a Swedish university and one living and working in London. They were compared to an English native group and to one another. The material had a multitask design: a role play, an interview and an online-narration. The results for the two non-native groups showed vulnerability on both frequency levels depending on task. Only the London group was nativelike across frequencies in the role play confirming our expectation. The results also show that the London group performed the tasks with a higher degree of lexical diversity and fluency than the university group.