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Pablo Robles-García

Assistant Professor, Spanish
Language Studies

Graduate Appointment: Graduate Program in Language & Literacies Education, OISE

Pablo Robles-García specializes in vocabulary acquisition, with a particular emphasis on the role of high-frequency words in the vocabulary development of L2 Spanish learners. He has developed multiple vocabulary tests that enable educators to evaluate the breadth of vocabulary knowledge among L2 Spanish learners. His research also extends to instructional strategies and practices for L2 Spanish vocabulary acquisition, with an aim to enhance vocabulary learning experiences and outcomes for L2 learners. 

Current Courses

  • LIN387/LTL387 (Theoretical Issues in Teaching and Learning Second Language Vocabulary)
  • SPA220 (Intermediate Spanish)

Graduate Course

  • CTL5314 (Theories in Vocabulary Teaching and Learning)

Education

  • PhD, Hispanic Linguistics, University of California, Davis 
  • MA, Linguistics and Spanish as a Second Language, University of León, Spain 
  • BA, Elementary Education, University of León, Spain 

Areas of Teaching and Research Interests

  • Vocabulary acquisition and testing 
  • Second language acquisition 
  • Spanish derivational morphology 

Selected Publications

  • Robles-García, P., Stewart, J., Nicklin, C., Vitta, J., McLean, S., & Kramer, B. (2023). The Wisdom of Crowds: When teacher judgments outperform word-frequency as a predictor of students’ vocabulary knowledge. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/136216882311760 
  • Stewart, J., Brown, D., Bennet, P., Robles-García, P., Sánchez-Gutiérrez, C., Marcos Miguel, N., Vitta, J., Nicklin, C., Stoeckel, T., & McLean, S. (2023). The contribution of affixes to English word difficulty for Chinese, German, and Spanish learners: A comparison. System. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2023.103035 
  • Robles-García, P., Wallace, G. H., & Sánchez-Gutiérrez, C. (2022). 3K-LEx-MC: The creation and validation of a multiple-choice vocabulary test in Spanish. ITL- International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.22008.rob 
  • Robles-García, P. (2022).  Receptive vocabulary knowledge in L2 learners of Spanish: The role of high frequency words. Foreign Language Annals, 55, 963– 984. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12630
  • Sánchez-Gutiérrez, C., Robles-García, P., & Pérez Serrano, M. (2022). L2 Spanish vocabulary teaching in US universities: Instructors’ beliefs and reported practices. Language Teaching Research, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688221074443 
  • Robles-García, P. (2020). 3K-LEx: Desarrollo y Validación de una Prueba de Amplitud Léxica en Español. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching (JSLT), 7, 64–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2020.1770465 

Selected Grants, Fellowships and Awards

  • 3K-LEx-MC: The creation and validation of a multiple-choice vocabulary test in Spanish

Other

Vocabulary tests

  • O-WSVLT, a software that allows teachers and research practitioners create written meaning-recall vocabulary tests that measure knowledge of the 8,000 most frequent words in Spanish; this interactive platform allows students to track their progress and provides information about the percentage of words form the 8,000 most frequent ones that test takers know. 
  • 3K-LEx-MC, a multiple-choice vocabulary test that measures the meaning recognition of the 3,000 most frequent words in Spanish 
  • 3K-LEx, a yes/no lexical decision task that measures knowledge of the 3,000 most frequent words in Spanish