Abstract

Breadth of lexical knowledge across varied frequency bands has proved to be essential to lexical competence, either in writing or oral production. This 2-year study is set within the field of vocabulary learning of English as a foreign language at the university level with Chilean EFL teacher-training students. Its main aim is to determine the effect of systematic vocabulary teaching and learning strategies use over the participants’ written lexical competence. To this end, a quasi-experimental study with pre and post-test was designed. The treatment process consisted of the implementation of 4 teaching activities and 2 learning strategies that fostered the development of vocabulary use over two academic semesters. The data elicitation process was carried out by means of different instruments, the receptive Vocabulary Levels Test, the productive Vocabulary Levels Test, and the Lexical Frequency Profile for free compositions as the pre and post-tests. Results show that the treatment process did have a positive effect on the treatment group across different frequency bands in the three tests in relation to the control group, being the receptive knowledge the one that showed more progress. Also, interesting developments were observed in the controlled productive knowledge and free vocabulary use in the treatment group.