Lexical availability in Argentinian students who attend bilingual institutions

Abstract

As a member of Área de Lingüística Aplicada of Centro de Investigaciones of Facultad de Lenguas (CIFAL) in Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, I took part in a project, carried out in Spanish, about lexical availability in institutions in Buenos Aires and Córdoba; such research project inspired me to explore this topic. The project presented to Secyt and developed between 2010-2011 is entitled “La enseñanza del español en el mundo hispánico”. Un estudio de replicación en la ciudad de Córdoba. Part of this title is written between quotation marks because it belongs to a larger project. This larger project stems from a study proposal presented by the Association of Spanish Language Academies (a group of Academies from all the Spanish-speaking countries) to Comillas Foundation in 2006 about the situation of the countries “in relation to linguistic education.”1 The project was accepted with the above mentioned name and was done between 2006-2011 under the direction of Humberto López Morales and with the collaboration of a representative per participant country. The study consisted of two parts: On the one hand, an analysis of the educational and institutional situation of each country in relation to the teaching of the mother tongue was carried out; on the other hand, some data about the linguistic competence of students who attended institutions in the capital city of each country was collected