Profundidad Del Conocimiento Léxico En Aprendices De Inglés Como Lengua Extranjera y En Nativos Del Idioma Inglés

UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y HUMANIDADES Departamento de Lingüística

Depth of lexical knowledge in learners of English as a foreign language and in native speakers of English
Informe final de Seminario de Grado para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesas

Profesora guía: Alfonsina Doddis Alumnos participantes: Felipe Aguirre Carolina Amín Camila ÁvilaBelén Berríos Valeria Sánchez Claudia San Martín Nicole Sepúlveda Natalia Tranchino María Paz Ureta

Santiago, Chile 2009

Table of content 1. Introduction …..………………………………………………………………… 1 2. Literature review …..…………………………………………………………… 4 3. The Study ……………………………………………………………………... 20 3.1 Objectives ………………………………………………………………… 20 3.1.1 General objectives ………………………………………………. 20 3.1.2 Specificobjectives ……………………………………………… 20 3.2 Research questions ……………………………………………………….. 20 3.3 Theoretical-descriptive framework ………………………………………. 21 3.3.1 Lexical competence …………………………………………….. 22 3.3.2 Word association studies ……………………………………….. 27 3.3.3 Recent studies on word association …………………………….. 29 3.3.4 Taxonomy of word association responses applied in the present study……………………………...……………………………………. 443.4 Methodology …………………………………………………………….. 45 3.4.1 Participants …………………………………………………….. 45 3.4.2 Data ……………………………………………………………. 45 3.4.2.1 Data elicitation ………………………………………. 45 3.4.2.2 Instrument …………………………………………… 46 3.4.2.3 Piloting the word association test ……………………47 3.4.2.4 Administration of the test …………………………… 48 3.4.3 Data analysis …………………………………………………… 49 3.4.3.1 Criteria for data analysis…………………………... 49 3.4.3.2 Procedure for data analysis ………………………… 50 4. Discussion of results ……………………………………………………………….. 52 5. Conclusions ………...……………………………………………………………… 59 6. Bibliography ………..……………………………………………………………… 62 7. Appendices ……..………………………………………………………………….. 68

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “The nine of us would like to honestly thank Professor Alfonsina Doddis for the time, patience, guidance and cooperation. Wewould also like to express our eternal gratitude to Miss Ximena Tabilo, who provided academic and moral support to the research group. Additionally, we would like to thank the native speakers who kindly participated in our study. Similarly, the group is deeply grateful to Patricia Osorio and don Manuel, who were very helpful and supportive while we overstayed in the Linguistics Department. Lastbut not least, we acknowledge our professors and classmates for their encouragement, support and patience throughout the duration of this process.

We appreciate you all”

1. Introduction

Applied Linguistics started to develop in Europe in the 1950’s as a discipline which embraces psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theory, along with social practice and language acquisition. Thus, itfocuses not only on First Language Acquisition but on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as well, and on the variety of contexts in which these processes may take place. Kramsch (1999) defines Applied Linguistics as an interdisciplinary field that mediates between the theory and the practice of language study, investigating the relationship between language forms and use, and between different kinds ofdiscourse. Initially, Applied Linguistics has focused on developing principles and practices for language description, but since the 1970’s it has included second language acquisition as a research area (Bygate 2005). Second language acquisition studies are rooted in linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education. According to Kramsch (2000), these studies were motivated by two reasons: earlychildren’s language acquisition and the need of teaching English as a second language. ‘Second language acquisition’ is a term which refers to the process of learning any language other than the mother tongue. Ellis (1994), among many other applied linguists, makes an important distinction between a second and a foreign Language. While a second language plays an institutional and social...