Vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary use in writing: A cross-sectional comparison of L2 English and L2 French

Abstract This study investigated the lexical proficiency of L2 learners of English and French. The aim of the study was two-fold. First, we examined the cross-sectional differences in productive vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary use between L2 learners in two grades. Second, we investigated the extent to which vocabulary knowledge and grade could predict vocabulary use in writing, operationalized as lexical diversity (moving average type-token ratio), mean-based, and band-based lexical sophistication (average frequency and lexical frequency profile). Participants (N = 423) from grade 10 and grade 12 completed a form recall test (productive vocabulary knowledge) and two writing tasks (vocabulary use) in both English and French. The cross-sectional comparison showed that while vocabulary knowledge and lexical diversity increased across grades in both languages, mean-based lexical sophistication only improved in English. Band-based sophistication was not observed to increase in either language. Furthermore, the results indicated that productive vocabulary knowledge predicted all measures of vocabulary use in English, but only predicted lexical diversity for French. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for L2 pedagogy.