Abstract
English as a foreign language (EFL) is a global issue that extends to thousands of learners worldwide who share a similar classroom situation. However, researchers have often considered learners to have homogeneous linguistic profiles, overlooking the fact that EFL classrooms in primary and secondary education include learners with different linguistic profiles. Despite the fact that immigrant and non-immigrant students meet every day in classrooms, little is known about the EFL performance of the former compared to the latter. This paper addresses this reality, and explores the vocabulary performance of immigrant students, learners of English as an L3, compared to learners of English as an L2 who had the same course level and were from the same community. The research questions were twofold: 
 
 (1) to ascertain whether there were quantitative differences between L2 and L3 English learners in terms of the number of words produced by each group, and 
 
 (2) to ascertain whether there were qualitative differences in the words produced by the L3 and L2 groups with regard to (a) the most and least productive prompts for each group, and (b) the number of infrequent words appearing in the production of each group. 
 
 The sample consisted of 14 bilingual students who were learners of English as an L3 and 14 monolingual learners of English as an L2, respectively, who were in the twelfth year of Spanish secondary education (age 17-18 years old). The data collection instrument was a lexical availability task consisting of six prompts. The data were lemmatized, coded and analysed by means of WordSmith Tools and the VocabProfile programme. The results indicated that the L2 group produced a greater number of words and a higher percentage of infrequent words in the most productive prompt.
Highlights
Lexical availability is defined as the words that come to mind in response to topics related to daily situations, such as when we need to talk about food and drink in a restaurant, or to talk about subjects, teaching materials or classroom management at school (Richards & Schmidt, 2010)
In addition to contributing to lexical availability research, the present study aims to respond to the need for research on the English performance of immigrant students to identify whether their bilingualism facilitates the learning of English as an L3, as shown by a higher vocabulary production than that of non-immigrant students in a lexical availability task, as well as to ascertain whether there are similarities or differences in the learning of English as an L3 and as an L2 as observed by the complexity of the words that both groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners produced in a lexical availability task
The study used a lexical availability task to compare the vocabulary performance of immigrant students who were learners of English as an L3 with that of non-immigrant students, who were learners of English as an L2
Summary
Lexical availability is defined as the words that come to mind in response to topics related to daily situations, such as when we need to talk about food and drink in a restaurant, or to talk about subjects, teaching materials or classroom management at school (Richards & Schmidt, 2010). The study of the lexical availability of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) is of foremost importance for teachers and researchers. The words produced in association with prompts related to daily issues and realities may reveal how EFL learners see themselves and others. The number of lexical availability studies of EFL learners is limited, and such studies have generally been concerned with studying the effect of age, gender and type of instruction (Jiménez Catalán, 2017) rather than comparing the lexical output of immigrant and non-immigrant students who are learners of English as third and second languages, respectively in EFL classrooms. Lexical availability task consisting of four our prompts: Hobbies, Town, Countryside, Food and drink OUP Test CEFR level Vocabulary test Reading test Listening test Speaking test Questionnaires. 93 Hungarian-Romanian EFL Learners 43 Hungarian EFL learners 60 Romanian EFL learners Secondary school: 10th, 11th, 12th 87 Basque-Spanish EFL Learners 86 Spanish 86 EFL learners Learners Secondary school: 12th 17-18 years’ old Language Level: B1 Demographic questionnaire 32 Polish-Russian learners of German Workers in an international company 28-62 years’ old A2+ B1 Levels 55 Hungarian-Serbian EFL Learners 55 Serbian EFL learners Grammar School: 4th 80 Baluchi-Persian EFL learners 80 Persian EFL learners Upper Secondary School Males 50 Arabic-Persian EFL learners 50 Persian EFL Learners 17-18 years’ old Secondary school Males
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