Spanish L1 speakers’ and EFL learners’ available lexicon

Abstract

This research explores the words elicited by 265 efl students in their second year of baccalaureate (A level courses) in response to nine prompts of a lexical availability task and it compares the results with previous studies on Spanish L1 lexical availability made with native students of their same educational level. It is a descriptive study in which we intend to prove if (i) there exists quantitative differences in the number of words retrieved by the Spanish L1 speakers and the efl learners and whether (ii) the most and least productive prompts coincide in each group of informants. Mean values are used to set this comparison and cue words are classified from the most to the least productive ones. Our findings reveal that Spanish L1 speakers elicit a higher number of words being ‘Food and Drink’ one of the most productive prompts in L1 and efl whereas ‘Countryside’ is one of the least productive prompts.

https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.40.5