Léxico disponible de estudiantes marroquíes de español como lengua extranjera (nivel universitario)

Abstract

Our research has as a main purpose to develop a dictionary of the available lexicon of Moroccan students of Spanish as a foreign language (university level). It is, therefore, a parallel inquiry to the Pan-Hispanic Project of Lexical Availability, promoted and directed by Professor Humberto López Morales since the 1990s. The initiators of this branch of research in the field of teaching Spanish as a foreign language were Professors Carcedo González, who worked with Spanish language students in Finland, and Samper Hernández, who has conducted several studies with foreign students with different mother tongues in the city of Salamanca (Spain). In addition, our doctoral thesis opens a new line of research in Morocco, especially in the city of Agadir. Therefore, the need to begin the research is urgent, particularly in view of the large number of applications that these studies have in other disciplines such as sociolinguistics, dialectology, ethnolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics or teaching of mother or foreign language in design of the curriculum, etc. Our purpose also includes providing relevant information about our students, such as first words that they elicit, lexical richness, productivity according to each lexical field, etc., with special focus on the area of Spanish as a foreign language, as a second or third language in the specific case of Moroccans. So, it is a new study of great importance because it has been done for the first time in Morocco. As for the methodology followed, we have opted for what is recommended by the PanHispanic Project of Lexical Availability. We have conducted a sufficiently significant number of surveys to be able to collect the available lexicon of our respondents. For the edition of the responses in order to prepare the resulting dictionary, we have followed the guidelines set forth by Samper Padilla in 1998. Then, thanks to the computerization of the data through the ‘LexiDisp’ program, we have analyzed the influence of different social variables such as ‘sex’, ‘mother tongue’, ‘sociocultural level’, ‘school level’ and ‘the knowledge of another language (s)’ on the lexical productivity of Moroccans. Finally, we have carried out a quantitative and qualitative comparison between the results obtained in our study and those reported in other research on speakers of Spanish as a Foreign Language, with respect to the productivity each lexical field (or center of interest), the average number of responses and the cohesion index, in order to compare our results and to be able to show the degree of compatibility in the lexical productions updated by our respondents. Keywords: available lexicon, Moroccan university students, social variables, lexical productivity, Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL)