ABSTRACT This study explores the effect of three activities on ESL vocabulary acquisition. Three groups of students in their sixth year of Primary Education participated. Each group worked new vocabulary with a different activity. The first group used reading plus flash cards; the second did the same through reading plus filling the gaps; the third one worked with a crossword. Each activity meets a different number of criteria within the so-called Technique Feature Analysis (Nation and Webb, 2011). This model is specifically designed to explain the lexical processing in a second language. After the activities were done, the participants' receptive and productive knowledge was tested. The results suggest that this model is sensitive to receptive vocabulary knowledge in second language, while it is not to productive knowledge.

RESUMEN El presente estudio pretende explorar el efecto de tres actividades sobre la adquisición léxica en inglés como segunda lengua. Tres grupos de estudiantes cursando sexto curso de Educación Primaria participaron en el estudio. Cada grupo trabajó el léxico a través de una actividad distinta. El primero utilizó comprensión lectora y flash cards; el segundo, comprensión lectora y relleno de huecos; el tercero lo trabajó mediante un crucigrama. Las actividades se diferencian entre ellas por el número de criterios que cumplen dentro del llamado Technique Feature Analysis (Nation y Webb, 2011), un modelo creado específica mente para explicar el procesamiento léxico en segunda lengua. Tras los tres tratamientos léxicos, todos los participantes realizaron un test productivo y otro receptivo. Los resul tados sugieren que este modelo es sensible al conocimiento receptivo del vocabulario en segunda lengua, mientras que no lo es en cuanto al conocimiento productivo del mismo.

Several studies, such as the one carried out by Checa and Arjona (2011), show the negative view of the Spanish media towards immigration from a social perspective, in which immigration is conceived as a threat and an invasion that causes fear and hostility. However, this negative view has been barely analysed from a linguistic perspective. In particular, this study aims to explore the semantic prosody of the Spanish lexical items inmigración (immigration) and inmigrante (immigrant) in written media. For this purpose, an ad hoc corpus of news on the phenomenon of immigration has been compiled. News between 2003 and 2013 from two national newspapers with different political ideology (El Mundo and El País) were collected. The analysis of the news was carried out with WordSmith, a corpus analysis software which enabled us to observe the co-occurrences of the words inmigrante and inmigración. The results reveal that most of the words co-occurring with inmigrante and inmigración have an unfavourable meaning. These results confirm those of sociological studies which have found a feeling of rejection towards the phenomenon of immigration. Therefore, our results evidence how this negative feeling is also represented in the media discourse.

Varios estudios, como el llevado a cabo por Checa y Arjona (2011), muestran la visión negativa de los medios de comunicación españoles hacia la inmigración desde una perspectiva social, en la que la inmigración se concibe como una amenaza y una invasión que despierta miedo y hostilidad. Sin embargo, esta visión negativa apenas se ha analizado desde una perspectiva lingüística. En concreto, en este estudio se pretende explorar la prosodia semántica de las unidades léxicas ‘inmigración’ e ‘inmigrante’ en los medios de comunicación escritos. Para este propósito, se ha compilado un corpus ad hoc de noticias sobre el fenómeno de la inmigración. Las noticias seleccionadas abarcan desde el 2003 hasta el 2013 y pertenecen a dos periódicos nacionales con ideología política diferente (El Mundo y El País). El análisis de las noticias se llevó a cabo con WordSmith, un software de análisis del corpus que nos permitió observar las co-ocurrencias de las palabras ‘inmigrante’ e ‘inmigración’. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que la mayoría de las palabras que aparecen con ‘inmigrante’ y con ‘inmigración’ tienen un significado desfavorable. Estos resultados coinciden con aquellos estudios sociológicos que muestran un sentimiento de rechazo hacia el fenómeno de la inmigración. Por tanto, nuestros resultados evidencian cómo dicho sentimiento negativo también se refleja en el discurso mediático.

Psicopatia envolve uma série de características cognitivas, sociais e emocionais específicas que diferenciam o psicopata do resto da população; as duas características mais notáveis são os déficits emocionais extremos e profundos refletidos na apatia do próprio egoísmo. Também vale destacar as habilidades de comunicação dos psicopatas, que usam a linguagem para mentir. Há uma falta de estudos sobre o discurso de psicopatas, especialmente em espanhol; portanto, o presente estudo objetiva contrastrar declarações veridicas com outras declarações difamatórias verdadeiras. A análise textual feita enquadra-se no campo da linguística computacional forense, e é complementada com informações mais específicas para os procedimentos estilometria textual. A pesquisa mostra como o parâmetro de idioma predominante para a condição psicológica do psicopata tem a ver com a distribuição de pessoa gramatical; além disso, evidencia a frequência de uso de certos advérbios modais de segurança e verbos relacionados com os processos cognitivos.

Psychopathy involves a series of specific cognitive, social and emotional features which make the psychopath different from the general population; the two most significant characteristics are extreme selfishness and deep emotional deficit that is reflected in apathy. Notably, psychopaths are skilled communicators who that use language to lie. As there has been little examination of the speech associated specifically with psychopaths, especially in the Spanish language, the present study aims to contrast different veracious excerpts to others which are deceptive. The text analysis is framed within forensic computational linguistics, and complemented with some information related to the stylometric profile of the text. The investigation shows how the parameter mainly affected by the psychological condition of the psychopath subject is the distribution of grammatical persons; in addition, some further evidence includes the frequency of certainty adverbs and verbs related to cognitive processes.