Grammatical Nature of Available Lexicon of Learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language at Different Proficiency Levels

Abstract

Vocabulary is an integral part of language and constitutes an important indicator of foreign language learners’ communicative competence. However, vocabulary assessment is a complex task due to the multiple dimensions involved in lexical knowledge. The lexical availability task is a useful tool that provides different types of information related to the lexical knowledge of foreign language learners. Since this task allows to collect responses belonging to different grammatical categories, the present study sought to explore how the cognitive characteristics of different centers of interest are related to the grammatical category of the responses provided by learners of Spanish as a foreign language in a lexical availability task. Specifically, we examined how the grammatical category of the responses elicited by seven centers of interest (prompts) belonging to different cognitive categories varies as a function of proficiency level (elementary, intermediate, advanced). One hundred and forty Greek learners of Spanish participated in the study and performed a written lexical availability task. In this task, we included the following centers of interest: ‘House’, ‘Food and drinks’, ‘Professions and trades’, ‘Countryside’, ‘City’, ‘Celebrations and holidays’, and ‘Daily actions’. After quantifying the grammatical categories of the participants’ responses in each center of interest, the results showed that the grammatical category was influenced by the cognitive characteristics of the participants’ responses and the centers of interest.