Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages

Gender Perspectives on Vocabulary in Foreign and Second Languages provides the reader with a unique collection of empirical studies on gender and the acquisition, development, meaning and use of vocabulary by adult, adolescents, and, above all, young learners of English and Spanish in classroom contexts in Spain, Canada, and the USA. Successful vocabulary has been shown to play a salient role in foreign and second language learning. It is positively related to language achievement and degree of success in communicating in the language - something important for the hundreds of thousands of learners of English and Spanish in primary, secondary education and universities all over the world. This book makes an important contribution to research on gender and foreign and second language education by looking at some relationships between learner gender and meaning, vocabulary use, lexical creation, lexical production, and word association, as well as how words encode both patterns of gender representation and gender identities. It also has a great deal to offer to trainee and practicing teachers of English or Spanish as a second/foreign language.