Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese L3 Beginner Learners.

Xuelan Li,Huiping Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.752950

Abstract

Lexical richness is considered as one of the most efficient methods for assessing writing proficiency and development. However, the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing remain relatively poorly understood compared with that of L2 writings. This study reports a cross-sectional corpus-based study that aims to explore the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writings by Chinese beginner learners of English from the perspective of the dynamic usage-based approach. Specifically, this study compares samples of English writing by Chinese L3 secondary students (grades 7–12) aged 13–18 across three learning stages in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity and lexical density. The writing samples were collected from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Ethnic Minority Beginner Learners as the Third Language (WCCMBL), and the sample sizes of the three stages remained almost the same. The results revealed that lexical richness was generally low in L3 beginner learners' writing. Specifically, L3 beginner learners used fewer diverse words and lexical words, but used numerous high-frequency words in their writing. Additionally, lexical sophistication and lexical density yielded positive growth across the three learning stages, whereas lexical diversity developed non-linearly. These findings reveal a dynamic development of lexical richness in L3 writings, with each of the three measures developing unevenly. Drawing upon these findings, several suggestions for L3 vocabulary teaching are also proposed.

Highlights

Third language acquisition research has progressed rapidly in the last four decades, and it has recently been recognized as a component of second language acquisition (Sharwood Smith, 1995; Larsen-Freeman and Long, 2000; Ellis, 2013)
Based on cross-sectional comparisons among writing samples across three learning stages, this section presents the developmental features of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, and lexical density identified in L3 beginner learners’ English writings using the dynamic usage-based (DUB) approach
According to the DUB approach, sufficient linguistic input could accelerate the lexical learning process. This apparent increase in various word classes in the upper learning stages may be explained by extensive exposure to lexical words. This cross-sectional study investigated the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing samples by Chinese L3 beginner learners from the perspective of the DUB

Summary

Introduction

Third language acquisition research has progressed rapidly in the last four decades, and it has recently been recognized as a component of second language acquisition (Sharwood Smith, 1995; Larsen-Freeman and Long, 2000; Ellis, 2013). The large number of trilinguals and multilinguals in the world has led to a multilingual turn (Ortega, 2013), and third language acquisition research has been recognized as an independent and essential area in applied linguistics in recent years (e.g, Huang et al, 2020; Jessner et al, 2021).

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Conclusion