Vocabulary aspects of advanced L2 French

Abstract

In her overview of research on the advanced L2 learner, Bartning (1997) aims at characterizing the advanced learner variety. This characterization is above all based on morphosyntactic traits. The aim of this contribution is to present additional characteristics of the advanced learner as defined by Bartning (1997), as well as to describe even more advanced levels based on recent research concerning spoken L2 French. More specifically, the main issue under investigation is whether two vocabulary measures, viz. lexical richness and lexical formulaic sequences, can be used to distinguish between different advanced levels and thus contribute to the characterization of the advanced learner of French. An additional issue investigated here is whether these two lexical aspects correlate with each other or whether they develop at different rates.

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

“…Only the LS group was nativelike on both high-frequency types and tokens in the Role play and the Retelling task, supporting earlier results that vocabulary distinguishes proficiency levels (cf. Laufer 1995, Forsberg Lundell and Lindqvist 2012, Bardel et al 2012). In the highfrequency range in these two tasks the LS group used significantly more types than the US group, while using a similar number of tokens, which implies less repetition and possibly a wider vocabulary for the LS group.…”

“…In the literature calculations sometimes include only number of tokens (Bardel et al 2012, Lindqvist et al 2013, Forsberg Lundell and Lindqvist 2012, but, as mentioned, in this study the number of types was also included. For instance, on some measurements the NNS groups were nativelike on the number of tokens, but not on the number of types, which is an indication that the NNS group recycled their types more often, implying less diversity in these groups (see Lindqvist 210: 415 for the importance of including types).…”

“…Vocabulary is an area of L2 acquisition that has received increasing attention. In a research project involving several L2 languages of which this study is a part there has been a focus on nativelike proficiency 1 (Lindqvist 2010, Bardel et al 2012, Forsberg Lundell and Lindqvist 2012, Lindqvist et al 2013, Gudmundson 2018, Erman andLewis 2018). The present study compared high-and low-frequency vocabulary from different frequency bands in the oral production of two groups of advanced non-native Swedish speakers of English (NNS) and one native English-speaking group (NS).…”

“…Like earlier work our study includes results from frequencies of tokens (cf. Lindqvist 2010, Lindqvist et al 2011, Bardel et al 2012, Lindqvist et al 2013, Forsberg Lundell and Lindqvist 2012, Bardel and Gudmundson 2018.…”

English subjects in the linguistic production of L1 Spanish, L1 Bosnian and L1 Danish speakers: typological similarity and transfer

“…Amount of input and time of instruction are said to be related issues in the sense that, the longer the participants are instructed in the L2, the greater the amount of input they receive. In the same vein, the more input they receive, the more proficient they get and this would be reflected, for instance, in a higher MLUw (Håkansson 2001;Unsworth & Blom 2010;Hawkins & Filipovic 2012;Lundell & Lindqvist 2012. The participants in this study differ in the time they have been instructed in L2 English: 2 years and 4 years.…”