Children's characteristics in vocabulary acquisition and use in the written production

Zusammenfassung

This paper examines children¿s characteristics in relation to their vocabulary acquisition process in the foreign language. The present study analyzes the vocabulary produced in written compositions by 79 young Spanish students in primary education. The main semantic fields used by them are identified and analyzed taking into account their characteristics. The field of leisure and games was found to be the most recurrent, followed by the fields of school, home and family. Their lexical errors are also analyzed, showing that misspellings, omissions, borrowings and substitutions are the most frequent. The results of both the semantic fields and the lexical errors produced by learners highlight the ending of the self-centred stage in which they are.