Resumen de LEX30 and P_LEX: Two Electronic Vocabulary Assessing Instruments for EFL/ESL Teachers 1

Soraya Moreno Espinosa, María del Pilar Agustín Llach, Almudena Fernández Fontecha

• The aim of this paper is to provide ESL/EFL teachers with a thorough description of two different technological vocabulary assessing tools, on the basis of Read and Chapelle (2001)’s framework for second language vocabulary assessment. We consider that this portrayal will enable them to decide whether any of these instruments fit within their pedagogical and/or assessment goals.The instruments to be described are two: P_Lex (Meara and Bell 2001) and Lex30 (Meara and Fitzpatrick 2000). P_Lex is a computational tool, used to measure lexical richness in L2 written compositions; whereas Lex30, is an incipient assessment tool of L2 productive vocabulary whose test format is a free word association task. Both tools share the underlying assumption that the more infrequent a word is, the bigger the L2 vocabulary size of learners is.