Research on EFL L2 and L3 (heritage) Learners’ Vocabulary Production

This presentation presents the words with the highest index of availability, which are the result of lexical availability achieved by semantic fluency tasks.

The conceptual stability of highly available words in various semantic categories permits to classify these words as semantic prototypes according to the theory of prototype. The aim of this paper is to compare the semantic prototypes in ten semantic categories from different lexical availability studies carried out with students with very different L1: Slovene, Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Chinese, and English.

The informants who come from different countries and cultures and speak different first languages have demonstrated that human beings share the same or similar categorization and universality of semantic prototypes in their L2 or L3 mental lexicon. The words that function as prototypes and have the highest index of availability are also words that are learned early in childhood and are common in everyday communication.

It has also been confirmed that the vast majority of prototypes are at the basic level, according to prototype theory. On the basis of these results, future research should delve into this same topic, comparing the lexical availability of L2 and L3 heritage learners and verifying if the same prototype universality occurs, if not, further research should be dedicated to the organization of mental lexicon.

BA in Spanish and English, MA and PhD in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language is an Associate Professor of Foreign Language Teaching Methodology at the Romance Department of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her main professional and research fields are teaching/learning vocabulary, lexical availability, learner strategies in language learning, developing oral skills, evaluation of students’ textbooks, foreign language testing, intercultural competence, and foreign language teacher training.

She has held many teacher training workshops at the University of Ljubljana, the National Board of Education, and the National Examination Center of Slovenia. She regularly participates in international conferences and has been a member of many international scientific committees (University of Cordoba, University of La Rioja, University of Belgrade, University of Adam Mickiewicz, among others). She has given lectures at various universities in Spain, Poland, Serbia, and Austria.

For 12 years, she was the president of the National Bachelor Examination Committee for Spanish at the National Examination Center of the Republic of Slovenia. She has written numerous Spanish students’ textbook evaluations for the Ministry of Education. She is also one of the founders of the Slovene Association of Spanish Teachers. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching Spanish and English.