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Lexical Variation in Learners’ Responses to Cue Words: The Effect of Gender

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Lexical Availability in English and Spanish as a Second Language

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 17))

Abstract

This chapter looks at the effect of gender on words retrieved by the same sample of English as Foreign Language Learners at two points of time: sixth grade and ninth grade. The prompts were: ‘Body’, ‘Food’, ‘School’, ‘Town’, ‘Countryside’, ‘Transport’, ‘Animals’, ‘Sports’, and ‘Professions’. The study provides evidence of a significant increase of word responses in 9th grade for all cue words and for both groups. This result is relevant for lexical availability as well as for vocabulary research as it proves that learners continue learning words within each of the semantic categories represented by the cue words. The study is also relevant for sociolinguistic research on gender and language education as it reveals significant differences in favour of females in six prompts out of nine at the two collection times.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Wilcoxon-signed rank test for non-parametric comparison of two related samples was conducted. Significance values for all pairs are p = .000.

  2. 2.

    The Mann–Whitney test for non-parametric comparison of two independent samples was conducted. The p values are as follows: ‘Transport’: .117, ‘Town’: .110, ‘School’: .05, ‘Professions’: .046, ‘Countryside’: .019, ‘Hobbies’: .014, ‘Parts of the body’: 002, ‘Animals’: .005, ‘Food and drink’: .000. Significant level is set at p = .05.

  3. 3.

    The Wilcoxon-signed rank test for non-parametric comparison of two related samples was conducted. Significance values for all pairs are p = .000.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the financial support of FEDER and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through grant nº FFI2010-19334.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Filologías Modernas. Facultad de Letras y Educación, Universidad de La Rioja, C/San José de Calasanz s/n, 26004, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

    María del Pilar Agustín Llach & Almudena Fernández Fontecha

Authors
  1. María del Pilar Agustín Llach
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  2. Almudena Fernández Fontecha
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Correspondence to María del Pilar Agustín Llach .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Letras y Educación Departamento de Filologías Modernas, Universidad de La Rioja, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

    Rosa María Jiménez Catalán

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del Pilar Agustín Llach, M., Fontecha, A.F. (2014). Lexical Variation in Learners’ Responses to Cue Words: The Effect of Gender. In: Jiménez Catalán, R. (eds) Lexical Availability in English and Spanish as a Second Language. Educational Linguistics, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7158-1_5

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