Development of lexical richness among beginning learners of French as a foreign language

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge forms the basis of all the communicative skills and is a core component of language proficiency. In educational contexts in which target language input is limited, the acquisition of new vocabulary can be a challenging task for learners, and lexical development might be slow. This study explored the extent to which 14 upper-secondary students of French as a foreign language (FFL) in Norwegian schools showed signs of increased lexical richness in their written production over a period of approximately six months. The data were taken from the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) corpus, a digital collection of second and foreign-language learner texts. Two aspects of lexical richness were investigated: 1) lexical sophistication was measured using the MultiLingProfiler software for lexical frequency profiling and supplemented by a manual and more detailed analysis of five learners’ texts; 2) lexical diversity was measured using D_Tools v.2.0 and word family counts. The data revealed that although many learners showed signs of using a somewhat more varied vocabulary over time, it is difficult to find proof of productive vocabulary development among beginning learners of FFL within such a limited period. The study suggests that finer-grained measures of analysis could be added to existing automated tools to make these tools more useful for beginner levels.