Quantifying word association responses: what is native-like?

Abstract Word associations are beginning to be used in the areas of L2 vocabulary research and measurement, but traditional methodology has limited their potential. Three problems in particular have been identified as weaknesses. First, the difference between common and uncommon associations has not been captured by previous methods. Second, traditional methodology has accepted single associations as sufficient evidence of association “knowledge”. Third, there has previously been no principled way to determine a threshold where association performance becomes native-like. The new procedure proposed in this paper addresses these problems and results in a four-level descriptive system of association behavior which includes a principled way of determining whether L2 word associations are native-like. This new methodology provides an enhanced way of incorporating word associations into future investigations of vocabulary learning and assessment.

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