This volume contributes to the research in two different research areas:
lexical availability studies and vocabulary research in second or
foreign languages. Lexical availability is defined as the words that
immediately come to mind as a response to a stimulus provided by topics
related to domains closely connected to daily life: for instance
animals, food and drink, daily activities, politics, or poverty. Lexical
availability is a dimension of learners' receptive and productive
lexical competence, and, consequently, an important variable of
learners' communicative competence. Written by leading researchers in
Spanish and English applied linguistics, the studies presented in this
volume offer the reader findings and insights from studies conducted in
learners with different mother tongues, who learn English or Spanish as
their second or third language. "This book made me aware of an approach
to vocabulary acquisition which has a long tradition in European
research, but has been somewhat neglected by English-speaking
researchers. The methodology was pioneered in France where it developed
into the Francais Fondamental project - an influential approach to the
vocabulary needs of learners of French. It was also taken up by Spanish
researchers, and more recently developed by the team at La Rioja
University. Where English-language research has focused on the frequency
of words in large corpora and the implications of this feature for L2
vocabulary acquisition, the lexical availability tradition takes a much
more learner-centred approach to L2 vocabulary skills, directly
reflecting learners' needs and learners' ability to do things with
small, effective vocabularies. This leads to a set of research
priorities that look refreshingly different from the ones we are used
to. Read this book. It might change the way you think about vocabulary
research." Paul Meara, Swansea University, Wales, UK
