Abstract
The present study explores academic vocabulary knowledge, operationalised through the Academic Word List, among first-year higher education students. Both receptive and productive knowledge and the proportion between the two are examined. Results show that while receptive knowledge is readily acquired by first-year students, productive knowledge lags behind and remains problematic. This entails that receptive knowledge is much larger than productive knowledge, which confirms earlier indications that receptive vocabulary knowledge is larger than productive knowledge for both academic vocabulary (Zhou 2010) and general vocabulary (cf. Laufer 1998, Webb 2008, among others). Furthermore, results reveal that the ratio between receptive and productive knowledge is slightly above 50%, which lends empirical support to previous findings that the ratio between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge can be anywhere between 50% and 80% (Milton 2009). This finding is extended here to academic vocabulary; complementing Zhou’s (2010) study that investigated the relationship between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge without examining the ratio between them. On the basis of these results, approaches that could potentially contribute to fostering productive knowledge growth are discussed. Avenues worth exploring to gain further insight into the relationship between receptive and productive knowledge are also suggested.
Highlights
The topic of vocabulary has gained popularity since the 1990s (Read 2000), and the topic has been investigated from different angles
Having used words from the same frequency band and having involved students from the same class and of comparable proficiency level, this study indicates that the ratio between receptive and productive knowledge could be around 50%
Results indicate that the particular cohort of higher education first-year students seem to have mastery of the academic vocabulary at the receptive level
Summary
The topic of vocabulary has gained popularity since the 1990s (Read 2000), and the topic has been investigated from different angles. Scholars were interested in the conceptualisation of vocabulary knowledge and in measuring it. Vocabulary knowledge was predominantly conceptualised in terms of dimensions. In this regard, Meara (1996) and Henriksen (1999) proposed dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, i.e. vocabulary size, referring to the words one understands; vocabulary depth, referring to how well the words are known; and receptive-productive dimension, referring to the relationship between the words understood and those that can be used. The dimensional approach was supported by many researchers http://spil.journals.ac.za (cf Zareva, Schwanenflugel and Nikolova 2005) and since vocabulary has been measured in terms of dimensions
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