De Woordenschat Van Allochtone Tweede-Taalverwervers; Werk in Uitvoering

The general introduction of this article deals with the quantitative and qualitative differen-ces between the vocabularies of first and second language learners. Quantitative differen-ces concern the number of words 'known' and qualitative differences have to do with the level' of word knowledge, for instance with the way words are embedded in the semantic network or with the proficiency in providing collocations. The second part of the article describes work in progress, i.e. two projects on the quality of word knowledge. The first project is on the acquisition of polysemous words (the knowledge of multiple word meanings). The results of a pilot study are reported. The second project is an educational experiment aiming at improving the deep word knowledge of minority children in their second language ('deep word knowledge' is seen as the knowledge of the various relations between words in the semantic network, especially the conceptual hierarchical relations).