Una responsabilidad escolar olvidada: el desarrollo del componente léxico

Abstract

This article states the need to help, in quite a well planned fashion, lexical development in the Costa Rican educational system. It analyzes the results derived from a national sample of 1712 texts written by four- and six-graders. It shows data on the average of lemmas per composition and on lexical density. It also analyzes into conceptual fields those words equal or over 100 in frequency 100F). It proposes some parameters to measure lexical density in Cycles I and II of the Basic General Education. It concludes that it is very likely that the lexical poverty found in the students affects negatively their potential ability to refer to the world, to show relationships and to grasp abstractions. Such poverty would limit the learning of different subjects in the primary school curriculum.