The Effect of Instruction on Polish Spanish Learners’ Lexical Availability

Abstract

This chapter compares two bilingual programs in secondary education in Poland. The author conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the lexical availability output of Polish students, learners of Spanish as a foreign language in an intensive and an extensive bilingual program with a similar number of hours of instruction. In addition to providing insights into Polish Spanish learners’ available lexicons, the findings of this chapter also have educational implications for bilingual planning as they prove the higher effectiveness of intensive programs over extensive programs. Finally, the present study corroborates the impact of the lexical availability task on the obtained results. This is shown in the high coincidence of Polish Spanish Learners’ results with other investigations in the Hispanic world as well as with lexical availability studies in English and Spanish as foreign languages.