SweLLex: Second language learners’ productive vocabulary

This paper presents a new lexical resource for learners of Swedish as a second language, SweLLex, and a know-how behind its creation. We concentrate on L2 learners’ productive vocabulary, i.e. words that they are actively able to produce, rather than the lexica they comprehend (receptive vocabulary). The proposed list covers productive vocabulary used by L2 learners in their essays. Each lexical item on the list is connected to its frequency distribution over the six levels of proficiency defined by the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001). To make this list a more reliable resource, we experiment with normalizing L2 word-level errors by replacing them with their correct equivalents. SweLLex has been tested in a prototype system for automatic CEFR level classification of essays as well as in a visualization tool aimed at exploring L2 vocabulary contrasting receptive and productive vocabulary usage at different levels of language proficiency.

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