The purpose of the present study was to determine what features
associated with the macrolevel of lexical competence vary as a function of
an increase in second language (L2) proficiency. The macrolevel of
participants' word knowledge was described with respect to six
variables that are commonly associated with three proposed macrolevel
dimensions, namely quantity, quality, and metacognitive awareness.
Sixty-four participants (native speakers of English, L2 advanced learners,
and intermediate learners of English) self-rated their familiarity with 73
lexical items and were asked to generate word associations to the words
they identified in a verifiable way as known. The data analyses showed
that some measures, such as vocabulary size, word frequency effects,
number of associations, and within-group consistency of participants'
associative domain, are more sensitive to L2 learners' increasing
proficiency than others (e.g., nativelike commonality of associations). We
thus conclude that some aspects, such as quality and quantity of L2
lexical competence, develop as the proficiency of the L2 learners
increases, whereas others, such as learners' metacognitive awareness,
are not proficiency dependent. We also suggest that the measures that were
identified as sensitive to capturing the overall state of L2
learners' vocabularies would also be reliable indexes of
learners' proficiency development.