To What Extent Does Long-Term Foreign Language Education Help Improve Spoken Second Language Lexical Proficiency?

The current study examined lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech attainment in the foreign language (FL) classroom setting (i.e., several hours of target language input per week). A total of 72 second-year university students with 7 years of FL study and no experience abroad participated in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:TESOL quarterly 2019-03, Vol.53 (1), p.82-107
Main Author: SAITO, KAZUYA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
College students
Contrastive Linguistics
Correlation
Educational research
English (Second Language)
English as a second language
English proficiency
Foreign language learning
Imageability
Individual Differences
Japanese
Japanese language
Language Proficiency
Learning outcomes
Linguistic Input
Morphology (Languages)
Native Language
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Speech Communication
Spontaneous speech
Syntax
Undergraduate Students
Vocabulary development
Vocabulary Skills
Word Frequency
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Summary:The current study examined lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech attainment in the foreign language (FL) classroom setting (i.e., several hours of target language input per week). A total of 72 second-year university students with 7 years of FL study and no experience abroad participated in the study. Their spontaneous speech was analyzed via a set of lexical measures and then compared to that of experienced, naturalistic Japanese L2 learners of English. According to the results, their lexical proficiency was factored into three dimensions—appropriateness (global, semantic, morphosyntactic accuracy), specificity (frequency, range), and abstractness (concreteness, meaningfulness, imageability, hypernymy). Overall, extensive FL education led many participants' specificity performance to reach proficiency levels comparable to the baseline group. Approximately half of participants achieved such satisfactory proficiency in abstractness. The participants' lexical appropriateness demonstrated a great deal of individual variability and was linked to the extent to which they had recendy practiced the target language.
ISSN:0039-8322
1545-7249
DOI:10.1002/tesq.468