Abstract Within CLIL contexts, one area of vocabulary which has recently been suggested to be of extreme value is Lexical Availability (LA). However, previous research has generally used general prompts rather than those which address subject-specific vocabulary (SSV) and focused largely on quantitative aspects. To this effect, this study uses qualitative tools to analyse the LA of Spanish adolescent CLIL learners using a prompt which is related to the content they have studied: Economy & Money, focusing on the most readily available and non-shared words and word level and frequency. Results reveal clear advantages following exposure to SSV in CLIL, in terms of both level of vocabulary and lexical sophistication. The study supports suggestions that LA is an efficient way to investigate which vocabulary is needed in CLIL, and to assess this vocabulary to ensure students have the necessary language needed to succeed in this context.
Leah Geoghegan (Fri,) studied this question.