Several studies have confirmed the relevant role of lexical knowledge in general language proficiency. Lexical knowledge stands as an indicator of success in the development of lexical, communicative, strategic, discursive, sociocultural, and emotional competences. Likewise, receptive and productive together with associative lexical knowledge also play an influential role in the development of educational bi- and multilingualism.
One of the dimensions of lexical competence is lexical availability defined as the lexical knowledge which is activated only when the topic or situation calls for it. Meanwhile frequency studies focus on external corpora, lexical availability studies focus on the vocabulary produced by informants when prompted with stimuli. This helps build corpora which collect the mental lexicon of the informants.
Lexical availability allows for the study of lexical access in the FL, and also lexical acquisition processes in the FL. Lexical availability has been traditionally been the object of study in Spanish (as L1 mainly). Our research group, GLAUR, has been pioneer in the introduction of the construct of lexical availability in English as L2 and L3. For around two decades we have been investigating lexical learning in EFL in primary and secondary education. In the last years, we have focused on the available lexicon of Spanish L2 and L3 EFL learners in grade 12 within the national project (FFI-2013-47707-P) and the Master in Advanced Humanities. We have collected a corpus of available vocabulary in English L2, L3 of thousands of words from over 300 informants in La Rioja and Navarra. We have developed research lines on the effect of lexical profiles (bilingual/multilingual) on available vocabulary, psycho-social variables (language attitudes, emotions, personality), cognitive variables such as creativity, CLI/lexical transfer, or sociocultural competence.
We aim to bring together worldwide researchers and professionals, encourage intellectual development and provide opportunities for networking and collaboration with four main objectives:
Spread the findings of our research studies at Universidad de La Rioja, the community, and at the same time at an international forum.
Be a meeting point for international researchers on lexical availability in Spanish and English and on vocabulary acquisition in English L2, L3.
Access to the last advances in lexical availability,
vocabulary research
Promote bilingualism and multilingualism at Universidad de La Rioja through the use of English and Spanish as languages for academic purposes and scientific exchanges within the framework of an international conference with worldwide renowned researchers in the topics of the conference.
