SVALex: a CEFR-graded Lexical Resource for Swedish Foreign and Second Language Learners

The paper introduces SVALex, a lexical resource primarily aimed at learners and teachers of Swedish as a foreign and second language that describes the distribution of 15,681 words and expressions across the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The resource is based on a corpus of coursebook texts, and thus describes receptive vocabulary learners are exposed to during reading activities, as opposed to productive vocabulary they use when speaking or writing. The paper describes the methodology applied to create the list and to estimate the frequency distribution. It also discusses some characteristics of the resulting resource and compares it to other lexical resources for Swedish. An interesting feature of this resource is the possibility to separate the wheat from the chaff, identifying the core vocabulary at each level, i.e. vocabulary shared by several coursebook writers at each level, from peripheral vocabulary which is used by the minority of the coursebook writers.