Adolescent EFL learners’ cultural word knowledge

Abstract

The connection between lexicon and culture has been considered as crucial in foreign language pedagogy(Sharifian, 2009). Although some studies have previously focused on the relation between culture andvocabulary in EFL textbooks input (Cifone Ponte & Mora Guarín, 2021; Canga Alonso and Cifone Ponte,2016), and 2nd Baccalaureate EFL Spanish students’ cultural available lexicon (Canga Alonso, 2021) to thebest of our knowledge, nothing has been published in linguistic circles regarding EFL learners’ culturalavailable lexicon at the end of compulsory secondary education. The aim of the present paper was twofold:(i) to identify the number of cultural words produced by the group of informants in response to four stimuluswords related to culture, namely CULTURE, TRADITIONS and CELEBRATIONS and (ii) to explore whetherthe number of cultural words increased at the end of the academic year. To that end, 44 were tested oncultural lexical knowledge by means of a Pdlex task using the aforementioned stimulus words. These promptswere selected as they are defined in the curriculum of La Rioja (Decree 5/2011) and the CEFR (Council ofEurope 2001) as relevant for the development of learners’ cultural awareness. Data were collected at thebeginning (October) and at the end of the school year (May). Results indicate that the most productivecultural stimulus word is CELEBRATIONS while the least productive is TRADITIONS. Regarding our secondobjective, there is an increase in the production of cultural words in response to the three stimulus words.These findings evince that cultural vocabulary may be influenced by language instruction and EFL materials