Measuring orthographic and phonological vocabulary size in EFL learners: the impact of cognateness and out-of-school exposure

Abstract

The present study compares the orthographic and phonological vocabulary size of second language (L2) learners in intermediate-advanced stages of language acquisition and investigates the impact of cognateness and out-of-school exposure across vocabularies. Ten Spanish-Catalan bilinguals and twenty Italian university learners of English were administered with two comparable vocabulary size tests adapted from the V_Yes/No vocabulary size test. Evidence of a significant gap between the orthographic and phonological vocabulary size in favour of the former was found. As V_Yes/No employs both real words and nonwords, the target items in the vocabulary tests which overlapped with learners’ L1 were coded as cognates or nonword-cognates. Upon closer examination of these items, a positive relationship between cognateness and learners’ lexical choices was revealed. Furthermore, by means of a questionnaire, data regarding learners’ out-of-school exposure to English was gathered. Correlation analyses revealed differences between the two input modalities; significant relationships were found between the orthographic vocabulary size, watching captioned audio-visual material, reading and listening to music. The strongest correlation with phonological vocabulary size was instead obtained with reading. Pedagogical implications which could bridge the divide between the orthographic vocabulary and its phonological counterpart are discussed.