Thematic units and aspects of vocabulary knowledge in l2 Spanish textbooks

Abstract

Learning vocabulary entails the development of several aspects of lexical knowledge. Concretely, Nation (2001) proposed nine aspects of particular relevance. This study aims at analyzing their treatment in four L2 Spanish textbooks. Seven vocabulary themes that were present in all textbooks, were selected for analysis since certain aspects of lexical knowledge are more likely to appear in specific themes. For example, greetings would promote the introduction of constraints of use since Spanish greetings depend on the formality of the situation and the relationship between interlocutors; whereas introducing the parts of a house would not implicate contextual constraints. Results show that textbook activities mainly focus on the form-meaning aspect of vocabulary knowledge, while all other aspects play little to no role in vocabulary learning activities. This situation is overall consistent across themes, indicating that even when a particular theme could foster a specific aspect of lexical knowledge, this was not fully exploited in any of the textbooks. Additionally, the presentation of vocabulary in communicative contexts seems to promote the practice of several vocabulary knowledge aspects, whereas words presented in decontextualized semantic clusters tend to be practiced exclusively in terms of the form-meaning link.