Patterns of Vocabulary Development in Foreign-Language Learners1
Rolf Palmberga1
a1 Department of Teacher Education, Åbo Akademi
Abstract
After an introductory discussion of the concepts of vocabulary knowledge continua and foreign-language learners' mental lexicons, the paper presents the results of a longitudinal pilot study whose aim was to make preliminary insights into vocabulary development as it takes place in an ordinary foreign-language classroom setting involving elementary-level Swedish-speaking learners of English. The results are discussed in terms of vocabulary growth in general, the learners' accessibility to words under time pressure, the relationship between “old,” well-known words and newly learned words, and finally, the stability of the learners' immediate access to words.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition (1987), 9 : pp 201-219