A Contrastive Analysis of Lexical Availability in Spanish and English as a Second Language at Tertiary Level

Abstract

In the present paper,we carry out a study of lexical availability in a sample of modern languages students, whom mother tongue is Spanish and their main language of instruction is English. The process of compilation and analysis of data has been done twice in two different groups so as to be able to establish a real contrast between the two languages: English and Spanish. A quantitative analysis of the data is done and after there is a discussion of the findings. Our objective is to find out which is the available lexicon in groups of students at tertiary level and to see if there exist differences in the vocabulary those students use in their mother tongue in comparison with the lexicon they employ in their main language of instruction.