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ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Online First
Online First articles are the published Version of Record, made available as soon as they are finalized and formatted. They are in general accessible to current subscribers, until they have been included in an issue, which is accessible to subscribers to the relevant volume
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PolylexFLE
Author(s): Amalia Todirascu, Thomas François and Marion CargillAvailable online: 05 April 2024More LessAbstractMWE knowledge is key in the process of learning a foreign language, but its teaching remains hindered by the lack of list of expressions connected to pedagogical aims. In this paper, we present an extended version of the PolylexFLE database, containing 4,525 French multiword expressions (MWE) of three types: idioms, collocations or fixed expressions. In order to propose exercises following the difficulty scale of the European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), we used a mixed approach (manual and automatic) to annotate 1,186 expressions according to the CEFR levels. The paper focuses mostly on the automatic procedure that first identifies the expressions from the PolylexFLE database (and their variants) in a corpus of pedagogical texts (with CEFR labels) using a pattern-based system. In a second step, their distribution in this corpus is estimated and transformed into a single CEFR level. The automatic approach proposed is finally evaluated by 52 French as foreign language learners.
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Profiling English sentences based on CEFR levels
Author(s): Satoru Uchida, Yuki Arase and Tomoyuki KajiwaraAvailable online: 22 March 2024More LessAbstractThe study aims to demonstrate the procedure for constructing the CEFR-based Sentence Profile (CEFR-SP), a dataset with the CEFR levels assigned for sentences, and to identify the characteristics at each level. Basic statistics such as word length and sentence length are presented for each CEFR level for 7,511 carefully selected sentences, and statistical tests are conducted between adjacent levels to identify criterial features. The findings reveal significant differences in word length between adjacent levels, while word difficulty is not significant in discriminating levels at either end (A1–A2, C1–C2). Sentence length and depth are also not significant discriminators for higher levels (B2–C1, C1–C2). Notably, sentence-level data generally exhibit discriminative values compared to text-level statistics, indicating their direct capture of characteristics at each CEFR level.
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Towards a graded lexical inventory of multi-word combinations
Author(s): Rocío Cuberos Vicente, Elisa Rosado Villegas and Iban Mañas NavarreteAvailable online: 26 February 2024More LessAbstractCollocations have become increasingly important in our understanding of foreign language learning. When it comes to setting vocabulary learning goals, concerns about how to address collocations still arise today. This article explores the distribution of collocations in L1 and L2 Spanish production with the ultimate goal of informing the design of graded lexical inventories of multi-word combinations. To do so, we explore three defining properties of collocations in L1 and L2 production data, and across different levels of L2 proficiency: syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and the strength of association. Results indicate that there is an increase of collocational density and diversity, but that isolated features of collocations fail to predict L2 proficiency. Findings suggest the need to evaluate collocation use at a high level of granularity.
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Mapping of American English vocabulary by grade levels
Author(s): Michael Flor, Steven Holtzman, Paul Deane and Isaac BejarAvailable online: 26 February 2024More LessAbstractWe describe a large-scale effort to map English-language vocabulary by U.S. school grade levels. Our motivation is to rapidly expand graded vocabulary resources for work with native English speakers in the USA, while taking into consideration school-related influences rather than relying on just the corpus-frequency approaches. We report on the initial effort of data collection, with mapping of about 22K word forms. We provide comparisons of this mapping to some other recent vocabulary mapping efforts, such as age-of-acquisition. We then describe the efforts to automatically expand this resource by using linguistically motivated variables and corpus-based methods. Our current resource maps more than 126K English word forms to US school grade levels. We also compare a subset of our L1 mapped data to English L2 vocabulary levels, as expressed on the CEFR scale, and find that there is a considerable overlap in the order of vocabulary learning in L1 and L2 English.
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Swedish word family resource
Author(s): Elena Volodina, Yousuf Ali Mohammed and Therese Lindström TiedemannAvailable online: 26 February 2024More LessAbstractThe article introduces a novel lexical resource for Swedish based on word family principles. The development of the Swedish Word Family (SweWF) resource is set into the context of linguistic complexity in second language acquisition. The SweWF is particularly appropriate for that, given that it contains lexical items used in second language corpora, namely, in a corpus of coursebook texts, and in a corpus of learner essays. The main focus of the article is on the construction of the resource with its user interface and on its applicability for research, although it also opens vast possibilities for practical applications for language learning, testing and assessment. We demonstrate the value of the resource through several case studies.
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The effect of test format on productive recall of derivatives
Author(s): Emi Iwaizumi and Stuart WebbAvailable online: 12 December 2023More LessAbstractThis study investigated the extent to which two recall test formats – contextualized and decontextualized tests – affected productive recall of derivatives, and how the effects of token frequencies of derivatives and L2 receptive vocabulary knowledge on recalling derivatives was moderated by test format. Mixed effects logistic regression models examined the derivatives elicited from L1 (n = 21) and L2 English speakers’ (n = 107) on the two recall tests. Results indicated that contextual cues significantly facilitated recalling derivatives, while such facilitative effects were larger for native speakers and L2 learners with greater vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, token frequency affected the responses on the decontextualized test to a greater degree compared to the contextualized test. Results suggest that test format influences test-takers’ ability to recall knowledge to produce derivatives.
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Review of Mohamed (2022): Reading the Arab World: A Content-Based Textbook for Intermediate to Advanced Learners of Arabic
Author(s): Frida Akmalia, Yunita Laila Zulfa and Syihabuddin SyihabuddinAvailable online: 29 August 2023More Less
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Review of Karlsson (2023): Advanced Students’ Knowledge of Vocabulary in a First and Second Language
Author(s): Paul PauwelsAvailable online: 27 July 2023More Less
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Review of Lightfoot (2020): Born to Parse: How Children Select Their Languages
Author(s): Yu FuAvailable online: 13 July 2023More Less
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Extensive viewing and L2 vocabulary learning
Author(s): Ferran Gesa and Imma MiralpeixAvailable online: 08 June 2023More LessAbstractThis article presents two classroom-based studies lasting one academic year: Study 1 with beginner learners of English as a foreign language and Study 2 with intermediate learners. In each study, learners in the comparison and experimental groups were introduced to new vocabulary through regular explicit instruction in class, but only those in the experimental group additionally watched subtitled (Study 1) or captioned (Study 2) television series where the new vocabulary appeared. Lexical gains, computed for each academic term, showed an overall positive effect of television viewing, although more differences between groups were found towards the end of the intervention, and more significant results were obtained in Study 2. These longitudinal data provide relevant information on the role of extensive viewing for language learning in instructional settings, which is often missed in one-off studies outside and inside the classroom.
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‘Easy Language’ for migrants in France
Author(s): Emmanuelle Canut, Julia Fuchs, Juliette Delahaie, Magali Husianycia and Olivier TorresAvailable online: 12 May 2023More Less
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Review of Van den Branden (2022): How to Teach an Additional Language: To task or not to task?
Author(s): Paul PauwelsAvailable online: 06 April 2023More Less
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The updated Vocabulary Levels Test
Author(s): Stuart Webb, Yosuke Sasao and Oliver Ballance
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