The present study delves into the structure and lexical organization of L1 and L2 mentallexicons. Indirect access to the mental lexicon is provided by semantic fluency tasks, whichinform researchers about how the words are organized in the mental lexicon and retrievedwhen necessary. Here, two groups of participants were asked to retrieve as many words ofthe category fruits and vegetables as possible in two minutes. The first group is made up ofnative speakers of Spanish who responded in Spanish L1, whereas the second group ismade up of native speakers of Greek who are learning Spanish foreign language (SFL) whoresponded first in Spanish FL and later in Greek L1. The three sets of responses werescrutinized and compared for similarities and differences. Results point to a retrievalmechanism based on L1-mediated access for SFL learners and slightly different structuresof the mental lexicon. Even in very advanced learners, lexical organization and wordretrieval in the FL resembles L1 organizatio
