Spanish–English cognates and false cognates in academic spoken vocabulary: Lexical coverage, orthographic, and phonological transparency, and frequency

Abstract Despite the positive effect of cognate knowledge for L2 vocabulary acquisition and the importance of comprehending academic spoken English for academic success, little is known about the nature of cognates in academic spoken English. This study identified Spanish–English cognates among academic spoken English words, represented by Dang, Coxhead, and Webb’s (2017 “The academic spoken word list,” Language Learning, 67: 959–97. doi: 10.1111/lang.12253) Academic Spoken Word List (ASWL). Results showed that half of these words were Spanish–English cognates, more than 49 per cent were non-cognates, and less than 1 per cent were false cognates. Cognates and false cognates covered 10.53 per cent and 0.002 per cent of the academic spoken corpus, respectively. The ASWL cognates were more transparent in spelling than pronunciation. There was a close relationship between orthographic and phonological transparency. Words that have high frequency in English but low frequency in Spanish, words that have high frequency in Spanish regardless of their frequency in English, and words that have low frequency in both languages accounted for 61.85 per cent, 35.29 per cent, and 2.85 per cent of the ASWL cognates, respectively. The study offers further insights into the value of recognizing cognates and each kind of cognate for academic vocabulary acquisition and provides useful implications for vocabulary assessment and pedagogy.