Combining corpora and experimental data to investigate language learning during residence abroad: A study of lexical sophistication

This study investigates the development of lexical sophistication as a result of residence/study abroad. Both knowledge and use of low-frequency vocabulary were analyzed before and at the end of a 9-month stay abroad. Data were collected from 27 English-speaking university learners of Spanish who spent an academic year in Spain or Mexico. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed twice using the Spanish version of the Swansea Levels 'X-lex' test (Meara & Milton, 2003) which tests recognition of words from different frequency bands. Vocabulary use was assessed based on oral and written data from a learner corpus collected at the same time points. A profiler for lexical sophistication was created based on Spanish frequency data from the Corpus del Español which calculates the ratio of low-frequency words to total words produced. Results demonstrate significant increases over time in both knowledge and use of low-frequency vocabulary. Findings are discussed in light of previous research on study abroad and the analysis of lexical sophistication.