To What Extent Does Long‐Term Foreign Language Education Help Improve Spoken Second Language Lexical Proficiency?

Abstract

The current study examined lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech attainment in the foreign language (FL) classroom setting (i.e., several hours of target language input per week). A total of 72 second-year university students with 7 years of FL study and no experience abroad participated in the study. Their spontaneous speech was analyzed via a set of lexical measures and then compared to that of experienced, naturalistic Japanese L2 learners of English. According to the results, their lexical proficiency was factored into three dimensions-appropriateness (global, semantic, morphosyntactic accuracy), specificity (frequency, range), and abstractness (concreteness, meaningfulness, imageability, hypernymy). Overall, extensive FL education led many participants' specificity performance to reach proficiency levels comparable to the baseline group. Approximately half of participants achieved such satisfactory proficiency in abstractness. The participants' lexical appropriateness demonstrated a great deal of individual variability and was linked to the extent to which they had recently practiced the target language.

Investigating the role of vocabulary size in second language speaking ability

“…As for subjective assessment, human rating was adopted as it is widely used to assess spoken lexical proficiency in the area of standardized L2 proficiency testing (e.g. TOEFL, IELTS) as well as L2 speech research (Saito, 2018; Saito, Trofimovich, & Isaacs, 2017; Saito, Webb, Trofimovich, & Isaacs, 2016). Regarding objective assessment, we measured lexical sophistication based on word frequency as an index (Read, 2000).…”

“…A picture narrative task was adopted to elicit speech samples. Picture narrative tasks have been extensively used in L2 speech research and found suitable for eliciting and assessing lexical features in spoken texts (Saito, 2018; Saito et al, 2016, 2017; Skehan, 2009) from advanced L2 learners (IELTS 7.0; Li & Lorenzo-Dus, 2014). Comparing the effects of several tasks on lexical use in L2 oral production, Skehan (2009) suggested the utility of narrative task as it can ‘push second language speakers … into using less frequent lexis, presumably as they are responding to the events within the narrative’ (p. 517).…”

How does longitudinal interaction promote second language speech learning? Roles of learner experience and proficiency levels

“…There could still be improvements in vocabulary and morphosyntax at higher proficiency. For example, even advanced L2 learners have been reported to show difficulty acquiring certain lexical features LONGITUDINAL INTERACTION & SLA 4 which are less communicatively important and salient (Saito, 2019), more semantically complex and abstract (Zareva, Schwanenflugel, & Nikolova, 2012), and more infrequent and contextspecific (Kyle & Crossley, 2015). When it comes to the phonological accuracy aspects of language (i.e., pronouncing sounds and words correctly without L1 substitutions), however, any changes are unlikely to happen so rapidly.…”

“…Previous research has convincingly shown that different dimensions of L2 learners' vocabulary development take place at different rates. L2 learners quickly acquire lexical features with greater saliency and communicative value, higher frequency or/and more concrete meanings (e.g., Crossley, Salsbury, & McNamara, 2009;Foster & Wigglesworth, 2016;Saito, 2019); few L2 learners can attain nativelike L2 lexical competence, such as abilities to detect conventionalized word combinations (Foster, Bolibaugh, & Kotula, 2014) and access proverbs and idioms (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009). To this end, future studies should closely look at the impact of interaction on the multifaceted nature of L2 lexical and morphosyntactic acquisition by using a range of comprehension and production instruments.…”

“…More automatized and less monitored speech production  Increasing articulation rate (Saito et al, 2018)  Reducing the number of repetition and self-corrections (Lambert et al, 2017) Vocabulary Accuracy, breadth, depth More infrequent, multiple, complex, abstract and polysemous words  Contextually appropriate vocabulary use (Saito, 2019)  Nativelike collocation use (Foster et al, 2014)  Proverbs and idioms (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009)  Abstract words with multiple senses (Crossley et al, 2009)  Infrequent and context-specific words (Kyle & Crossley, 2015) Morphology Plurality, tenseaspect, article, word order…”