Analysing lexical richness in French learner language: What frequency lists and teacher judgements can tell us about basic and advanced words

Tidball, Fran�oise; Treffers-Daller, Jeanine

Abstract

In this paper we study different aspects of lexical richness in narratives of British learners of French. In particular we focus on different ways of measuring lexical sophistication. We compare the power of three different operationalisations of the Advanced Guiraud (AG) (Daller, van Hout and Treffers-Daller, 2003): one based on teacher judgement, one on 'le français fondamental I er degré' and one on frequency of lexical items. The results show that teacher judgement is a highly reliable tool for assessing lexical sophistication. The AG based on teacher judgements is better able to discriminate between the groups than the other operationalisations. It also works better than Vocabprofil (the French version of Laufer and Nation's (1995) Lexical Frequency Profile). © Cambridge University Press 2008.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Oct 21, 2008
• Deposit Date: Sep 17, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 2, 2016
• Journal: Journal of French Language Studies
• Print ISSN: 0959-2695
• Electronic ISSN: 1474-0079
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 299-313
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269508003463
• Keywords: French, language, words
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1022488
• Publisher URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2370068
• Additional Information: Additional Information : © Cambridge University Press 2008.
• Contract Date: Dec 2, 2016