Advanced Students’ L1 and L2 Mastery of Lexical Fields of Near Synonyms

Abstract

In the present investigation, 15 first-term university students were faced with eight fields of near synonyms in English(L2) and Swedish (L1) respectively and asked to pair up each item with its correct definition. Both the synsets as awhole and the items within each synonym set were of varying frequency. The investigation thus addresses thefollowing research question:In quantitative and qualitative terms, how well do advanced students master lexical fields of nearsynonyms on a whole as well as the respective items in each synonym set in their L2 as compared to theirL1?Results show that while most students have a relatively poor knowledge of L2 synsets as compared to in their L1, theknowledge they do possess appears to be strongly frequency-based.