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A developmental perspective on lexical knowledge in L2 oral interlanguage

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Annabelle David

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Abstract

This article reports on productive vocabulary development by instructed British learners of French over a five year period (from age 13 to 18). Lexical diversity development was investigated through a semi-guided oral picture-based task. Results show that the students' lexical diversity (as measured by D) did significantly improve throughout the five years showing little sign of slower periods. Overall more noun types were observed than verb types in the composition of the lexicon throughout the study but with a consistent decrease in its proportion after year 10. Further results using the Limiting Relative Diversity measure indicate that learners vary their use of nouns to a much larger extent than verbs. The discussion focuses on the noun-bias hypothesis and the use of different elicitation tasks.

Publication metadata

Author(s): David A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of French Language Studies

Year: 2008

Volume: 18

Issue: 3

Pages: 315-331

Date deposited: 01/07/2010

ISSN (print): 0959-2695

ISSN (electronic): 1474-0079

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959269508003475

DOI: 10.1017/S0959269508003475

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