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Anja Dernič

Marjana Šifrar Kalan

Taja Vidonja

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

Abstract

Lexical knowledge has long been recognized as a key component of second and foreign language proficiency, yet relatively little is known about how it develops in learners of Spanish as a foreign language in specific educational contexts. This study investigated the effects of demographic, experiential, and self-reported factors on lexical knowledge assessed with the validated LexTALE-Esp test (Izura et al., 2014) among 59 multilingual Slovenian university students of Spanish. Within the demographic variables, the findings indicated that gender did not significantly affect the vocabulary scores, whereas age and course level were both significant positive predictors. The age of acquisition of Spanish was found to be an important factor: learners who began in primary or secondary school significantly outperformed those who started at the university level. Moreover, participation in Erasmus+ programs and residence in a Spanish-speaking environment emerged as a robust predictor, with those who had lived abroad performing substantially better. Finally, self-reported proficiency was a strong predictor of lexical knowledge and explained 59% of the variance in test performance. This indicates a strong correspondence between university students’ metacognitive judgements and their actual test performance.

 

Keywords

Lexical knowledge, Spanish as a foreign language, LexTALE-Esp test, university students