Abstract
The overall aim of the present study is to achieve a better understanding of young instructed Swedish learners’ vocabulary knowledge in L3 French, by examining various aspects of vocabulary depth. Previous research has shown that this learner group’s vocabulary size increases systematically, and at a relatively fast pace, from grade 6 through grade 9 (i.e., from the first year of studies of French and onwards; from age 12 to 15). However, vocabulary size tests only give a quantitative estimation about how many words test takers know, and do not say anything about qualitative aspects of word knowledge. Vocabulary depth, on the other hand, concerns such aspects. In order to arrive at a more complete picture of learners’ word knowledge, both size and depth need to be examined. In the present study, aspects of vocabulary depth were analyzed in learners’ word choices in a written elicited production task. The data consist of 105 written retellings from students in grades 6, 7, 8, and 9. Word choices pertaining to various key elements in the retellings were included in the analysis, with a focus on orthographical, semantic, and morphological aspects of deep word knowledge. The results show that orthographical knowledge is similar throughout the years, with the same spelling difficulties occurring in all the grades at similar rates. Semantic and morphological knowledge seem to develop at a quicker pace, with the 8th and 9th graders having a deeper knowledge of these aspects. It can be concluded that some, but not all, aspects of deep knowledge start to develop during the first four years of studies of French.
Highlights
The overall purpose of the present study is to achieve a better understanding of Swedish learners’ vocabulary knowledge and development in French as a third language (L3) by examining aspects of vocabulary depth
Re-examined the results of the previous study, and showed that an important proportion of the known words turned out to have cognates—defined as words with similar forms and meanings in two or more languages—in either Swedish, English, or both of these languages. These results indicate that the vocabulary sizes might have been over-estimated, in the sense that learners may have indicated that they knew a word because they recognized it from their first language (L1) and/or their second language (L2)
The results seem to suggest that spelling difficulties are consistent throughout the years, with practically the same variants occurring in each grade
Summary
The overall purpose of the present study is to achieve a better understanding of Swedish learners’ vocabulary knowledge and development in French as a third language (L3) by examining aspects of vocabulary depth. As stated by Schmitt (2010), it is an impossible task to examine all aspects of vocabulary knowledge in one single test battery. This is because of the complexity of vocabulary knowledge, including a large number of different aspects related to the words’ form, meaning, and use (cf Nation 2020). Vocabulary studies necessarily have to focus on a limited number of aspects, but taken together, different studies can provide a more comprehensive picture of vocabulary knowledge and development (Schmitt 2010). This is what the present study aims to do
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