Vocabulary levels in English as a third language : An analysis of correlations between immigrants' Swedish L2 and English L3 vocabulary levels

Abstract: In an ever-changing modern world people migrate, to a greater extent than ever before. Sweden has faced a huge influx of new immigrants in the past 10 years, many of which have had to study for many years before being able to work, including learning English as a third language.This study looked at foreign-born adult learners (Swedish L2) of English and compared them to Swedish-born (Swedish L1) learners of English in terms of English vocabulary. This study also compared factors of age, gender, length of stay in Sweden and Swedish language level completed in Swedish L2 learners learning English; the study found that there is a small positive correlation between length of stay, younger age and completed Swedish studies with the results in the English Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT). As expected, the female students within both Swedish L1 and L2 learners outperformed the male counterparts. The study found a significant correlation between attainment on a Swedish vocabulary test and the English vocabulary test. A learner with a higher score on the Swedish test generally performed better on the English vocabulary test, to a statistically significant degree. This, most likely, is because Swedish is typologically close to English with a high number of cognates between the languages. Surprisingly enough, the results produced pointed to very limited vocabulary learning by moving through the Swedish adult education system as the increase in both Swedish and English vocabulary was negligible.