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This study investigates the effects of multilingualism and the degree of proficiency in different languages on vocabulary knowledge among Spanish language learners. Participants completed a 160-word meaning recall test designed to measure their knowledge of the 8,000 most frequent Spanish words and a self-assessment questionnaire on their multilingual profile. The results show that students with high multilingual profiles (knowing more than three languages) demonstrated greater vocabulary knowledge than learners with low multilingual profiles (knowing three or fewer languages), especially for words in low-frequency vocabulary ranges. However, the positive impact of multilingualism on vocabulary knowledge is only significant among learners with a high proficiency in Spanish (C1-C2 level), suggesting that identifying as highly proficient in multiple languages is advantageous only when learning vocabulary at higher proficiency levels. These results corroborate the benefits of multilingualism for fostering vocabulary development in a foreign language, while offering a nuanced picture of how additional languages (LX) are acquired by multilingual learners.

Studies on teachers’ beliefs about vocabulary learning and teaching have focused, so far, on English as a second language (L2), or foreign language (FL), in different contexts but little attention has been given to other L2s and FLs. In this study, 15 Spanish L2 instructors at large universities were interviewed in order to better understand where they stand when it comes to (1) the importance they give to vocabulary, as compared to grammar, in their classes, (2) how they decide which words to teach, and (3) how they assess students’ word knowledge. These interviews were subsequently analysed following Grounded Theory. Most instructors declared favoring grammar over vocabulary in their courses because the former is seen as more challenging and useful than the latter and because institutional practices and materials also present such a preference. When it comes to vocabulary selection, most of them declared feeling insecure in their decisions due to lack of access to useful resources and to vocabulary goals not being stated clearly anywhere in the syllabi. This lack of clarity when it comes to vocabulary learning goals also results in doubts about the usefulness of even evaluating word learning at all and an overreliance on informal assessments.

This study examined the receptive vocabulary knowledge and lexical developmental patterns of the 3000 most frequent words among 953 university L2 learners of Spanish at different stages in their language studies, taking into consideration the effect of high school instruction on high-frequency vocabulary knowledge. Results confirm that even students who are enrolled in the most advanced courses in their program lack considerable knowledge of the 3000 most frequent words in their L2. Most vocabulary gains take place during the first semesters of instruction, and the learning of these words decreases substantially in intermediate and upper-division courses. Furthermore, high school instruction plays an essential role in developing a solid high-frequency vocabulary baseline but falls short in providing lexical learning beyond the first 1300 most frequent words. These results corroborate the need to implement a more lexically driven syllabus in the L2 Spanish language classroom to foster the learning of high-frequency words.

Studies on teachers' beliefs about vocabulary learning and teaching have focused, so far, on English as a second language (L2), or foreign language (FL), in different contexts but little attention has been given to other L2s and FLs. In this study, 15 Spanish L2 instructors at large universities were interviewed in order to better understand where they stand when it comes to (1) the importance they give to vocabulary, as compared to grammar, in their classes, (2) how they decide which words to teach, and (3) how they assess students' word knowledge. These interviews were subsequently analysed following Grounded Theory. Most instructors declared favoring grammar over vocabulary in their courses because the former is seen as more challenging and useful than the latter and because institutional practices and materials also present such a preference. When it comes to vocabulary selection, most of them declared feeling insecure in their decisions due to lack of access to useful resources and to vocabulary goals not being stated clearly anywhere in the syllabi. This lack of clarity when it comes to vocabulary learning goals also results in doubts about the usefulness of even evaluating word learning at all and an overreliance on informal assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the development and validation of a 132-item Spanish-English bilingual multiple-choice vocabulary test based on the 3,000 most frequent lemmas that distinguishes between North American university students who satisfy the Foreign Language requirement and those who need to complete coursework. 819 students were assigned to one of the two 144-item forms of the preliminary test, which had 72 shared anchor items and other 72 form-specific items. Factor analysis was used to evaluate dimensionality and the Rasch model was used to select the items that best differentiated between these two student populations. This final form was administered to 213 students. Results showed high levels of unidimensionality, and the final form provided a Rasch reliability coefficient of 0.97. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical knowledge is an essential element in the development and linguistic competence of L2 learners. Several studies show that a relatively small number of word-families appear more frequently and represent a large proportion of the words used in a given language. Therefore, it is important to define and delimit what these words are, since these lexical units can be found in a wide variety of written texts and oral productions and are extremely useful for communicative purposes. Furthermore, we must know if language teaching courses and language textbooks favor the acquisition of these lexical units. This study (1) brings a detailed description of the concepts of lexical coverage, vocabulary size and vocabulary treatment in language textbooks in both Spanish and English, (2) emphasizes a lack of studies related to the acquisition of vocabulary in Spanish and (3) proposes an agenda with a series of guidelines in order to solve this lack of empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effectiveness of word-frequency and teacher judgments in determining students’ vocabulary knowledge and compared the predictive powers of both approaches when estimating vocabulary knowledge. Twenty-nine second language (L2) Spanish teachers were asked to predict how likely their students would know words from a 216-word Yes/No test that measures knowledge of the first 3,000 words in Spanish. The accuracy of their responses was compared with the results of 1,075 L2 Spanish students who completed the same test. To examine if the results could generalize to other L2 settings, 394 L2 English students completed a 70-word Yes/No test that measures knowledge of the first 14,000 words in English, and 15 L2 English language instructors attempted to predict which words would or would not be recognized. Results showed that for both language contexts, (1) the median teacher rater could assess students’ vocabulary knowledge with an accuracy roughly comparable to frequency, (2) the combination of teachers’ judgments displayed a stronger relationship with students’ performance on the vocabulary test than frequency, since the average of three or more teachers’ ratings improved upon frequency when examined with 1,000 bootstrapped samples, and (3) using teacher judgments and frequency together did not substantially improve the prediction of students’ vocabulary knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]