Boys’ and Girls’ L2 Word Associations

Abstract

Word association is regarded as an important dimension in second and foreign language learners’ lexical competence. Since Richards’s (1976) article on word knowledge, it has been claimed that second and foreign language (L2) learners need to know the different associations established by words, as it is one dimension of word knowledge. Word association tests have been used in the field of applied linguistics for a wide range of purposes. Following Moreno’s (2009) review of word association studies in L2, we can trace at least four tendencies that are summarized as follows: (i) studies that look at the relationship between L2 word association patterns and the nature of the mental lexicon (Meara, 1983; Soderman, 1993; Fitzpatrick, 2006; 2007a); (ii) studies that focus on the measurement of L2 productive vocabulary (Fitzpatrick, 2000; Meara and Fitzpatrick, 2000; Clenton, 2005; Jimenez and Moreno, 2005; Moreno, 2009); (iii) computer simulations to identify L2 lexical networks (see Wilks and Meara, 2002; Wilks et al., 2005); and (iv) comparative studies to identify tendencies in the word associations elicited by: (a) male and female learners (Sokmen, 1993; Jimenez and Moreno, 2004); (b) native and non-native speakers (see Kruse et al., 1987; Sokmen, 1993; Schmitt, 1998; Namei, 2004; Wilks et al., 2005; Fitzpatrick, 2006; 2007a); and (c) L2 young learners in two different learning contexts, that is, learning English as an L3 through Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) versus learning English as a subject in the Spanish primary school curriculum (Moreno, 2009).