Birgit Henriksen

THREE DIMENSIONS OF VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT

Progress toward establishing a model of lexical development to guide vocabulary acquisition research requires more precise specification of the various dimensions of lexical competence, the interrelationships among them, and how they interface with processes of word learning and use. Three dimensions of lexical competence are proposed: (a) partial to precise knowledge, (b) depth of knowledge, and (c) receptive to productive use ability. The relationship between the two knowledge dimensions and the acquisition of word meaning is considered, with emphasis on the complexity of the semantization 1 process and on the need for redefining lexical development as both item-learning and system-changing. The adequacy of the three-dimensional description as a reflection of the process of vocabulary development is then discussed. Consideration of the nature of the developmental interrelationships among the dimensions raises two further questions: (a) Is depth of knowledge a prerequisite for developing precise comprehension? and (b) Are precise knowledge and depth of knowledge prerequisites for a word to become productive?

Commentary on Part IV: Processes in the Development of L2 Collocational Knowledge — A Challenge for Language Learners, Researchers and Teachers

Collocations, that is, frequently recurring lexical patterns, often with specific semantic and syntactic restrictions, can be seen as a subset of formulaic sequences. Mastery of formulaic sequences, including collocations, is a central aspect of communicative competence, enabling the native speaker to process language both fluently and idiomatically (Pawley and Syder, 1983) and to fulfil basic communicative and social needs (Wray, 2002). For the L2 learner, formulaic sequences often function as a gateway to the new language and they may support the process of acquiring more creative language skills. Moreover, the ability to use formulaic sequences, including collocations, is an important element in gaining nativelike competence, and they may play an important role in taking on or rejecting group identity (Wray, 2002). Even though learners in the initial phases of learning may rely on accumulating different types of formulaic sequences, collocational knowledge is, nevertheless, a language phenomenon that is acquired late and often not mastered very well by L2 language learners (see, for example, Arnaud and Savignon, 1997; Revier and Henriksen, 2006). In this chapter, we will focus on the processes in the development of L2 collocational knowledge, which is the topic explored in the three research studies in Part IV. We will discuss both the challenges learners are faced with in relation to acquiring collocational knowledge and the challenges researchers are faced with in relation to describing and explaining the acquisition processes involved.

Implications for Research and Instruction

In this book, we have presented a multifaceted project in which the same informants were exposed to a number of tasks in both their first and their foreign language. In Chapter 1, we detailed the overall design of our study and, in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, the studies of lexical knowledge, lexical inferencing, and writing were dealt with, respectively. In Chapter 5, we traced the development of individual learners across the tasks from the three main areas studied. In this chapter, we shall round off our discussions by summing up what we have learnt with regard to research design, detailing what we would do were we given a second chance. Finally, with the caveat that instruction has not been the focus of our study, we shall draw attention to insights from our investigation that might be of interest in the context of language teaching.

Lexical Knowledge, Lexical Inferencing and Writing

In the previous chapters, we have investigated different aspects of our learners’ competence in their L1 and their L2. Chapter 2 was devoted to measures of declarative lexical competence, including an analysis of both the learners’ vocabulary size (breadth) and their network knowledge (depth). In Chapter 3, issues relating to lexical competence were still in focus, but the interest here was shifted to the learners’ lexical inferencing procedures and their ability to guess the meaning of unknown words in a number of short reading texts. In Chapter 4, the focus was moved away from our informants’ receptive skills to their productive skills, describing their writing procedures when asked to produce argumentative essays. In all three studies, the learners from the three educational levels were given identical, or similar, parallel tasks in their L1 (Danish) and their L2 (English). The investigations presented in the preceding chapters primarily concerned differences and similarities with regard to the within-subjects data, comparing the learners’ ability to cope in the two languages, and with regard to the cross-sectional data, comparing the three grade levels in English and in Danish, respectively.