Reviewed by Fraibet Aveledo, Bangor University

This book contains relevant studies conducted by Paul Meara and collaborators on word association in second language (L2) learners. M offers an overview of the evolution of his studies in this field, starting from the main metaphor that vocabulary forms a network.

The book is divided into five sections. Each begins with an introduction that summarizes the ideas and research problems that gave rise to the following studies. Section 1, ‘Early work’, presents two studies. Ch.1, ‘Learners’ word associations in French’ (5–20), originally published in 1978, focuses on word association in L2 learners of French. Its aim is to analyze how foreign words are stored in the mental lexicons of L2 learners and how they differ from native speakers’ lexicons. The study described in Ch. 2, ‘Word associations in a foreign language’ (21–28), from 1983, discusses revising the methodologies of the studies in Ch. 1.

Section 2, ‘Associations as productive vocabulary’, contains two studies published in 2000 and 2004. Their main objectives are to show how association data, specifically those obtained through the Lex30 tool (a word association task), can be used to measure the learner’s productive vocabulary. M argues that this tool has advantages over previous methods for assessing productive vocabulary. Ch. 3, ‘Lex30: An improved method of assessing productive vocabulary in an L2’ (33–44), presents a study that demonstrates how the productive vocabulary of non-native speakers of English is assessed through the Lex30 task. In Ch. 4, ‘Exploring the validity of a test of productive vocabulary’ (45–58), M focuses on the validity and reliability of this tool.

Section 3, ‘Word association networks’, is made up of three chapters in which the metaphor of vocabulary as a network is further developed. Based on graph theory and connectionist models, in Ch. 5, ‘Network structures and vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language’ (65–72), the author measures how L2 learners’ vocabulary is connected and how it differs from the vocabulary networks of native speakers. Ch. 6, ‘V_Links: Beyond vocabulary depth’ (73–84), deals with the problem of how to study vocabulary breadth (numbers of words that a learner knows) and vocabulary depth (how well the learner knows these words) using V_Links (a computerized tool that guides the task-taker to make associations between pairs of words). In Ch. 7, ‘A further note on simulating word association behavior in an L2’ (85–96), M presents a model that simulates a set of words and shows that the model’s output is similar to that of real L2 learners.

Section 4, ‘Bibliographical resources for word associations in an L2’, offers as Ch. 8, ‘Word associations in a second language: An annotated bibliography’ (101–28), a list of references in the field of word association with a brief summary that details the aim of the study, its methodology, and the main results. The final section, ‘Software applications’, contains three software manuals: the Lex30 program, described in Section 2; V_Six and its developed version, V_Links, explained in Ch. 6; and WA_Sorter, which allows the sorting and counting of word association data.

This book is a very useful resource for researchers interested in L2 learners’ vocabulary. It shows how M’s hypotheses and methodologies have evolved throughout his career.