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Partial Word Knowledge: Frontier Words In The L2 Mental Lexicon, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

The study set out to examine the partial word knowledge of native speakers, L2 advanced, and intermediate learners of English with regard to four word features from Richards' (1976) taxonomy of aspects describing what knowing a word entails. To capture partial familiarity, the participants completed in writing a test containing low and mid frequency content words, accompanied by a word knowledge scale. The analysis showed that there were three distinctive patterns of partially familiar vocabulary but their distribution across the three groups was quite different, which indicated that partial knowledge was linked to different word features across the three proficiency …