ABSTRACT
“Words are the basic building blocks of language, the units of meaning from which larger structures such as sentences, paragraphs and whole texts are formed” (Read 2000: 1). But the body of words that a person knows, i.e., their vocabulary knowledge or lexicon, is a complex construct that includes several dimensions. Nation (2013) distinguishes between receptive and productive vocabulary, recognizing that productive skills require higher levels of knowledge than receptive skills. Two other dimensions that have been traditionally studied as part of lexical competence are vocabulary size or breadth and vocabulary depth. Some internal (e.g., age of acquisition) and external factors (e.g., linguistic contact) can have great impact on an individual’s vocabulary. In addition to studies measuring vocabulary from those different perspectives, a number of researchers have looked at correlations between measures of vocabulary knowledge with other language skills such as reading and listening comprehension, and even with general language proficiency (Schmitt 2010). However, most of the studies have focused on the English language, while here the focus is on Spanish.
