Productive Vocabulary Knowledge of ESL Learners

Abdulmalik Usman,Dahiru Musa Abdullahi

doi:10.34256/ajir1814

Abstract

The paper seeks to investigate the level of productive knowledge of ESL learners, the writing quality and the relationship between the vocabulary knowledge and the writing quality. 150 final year students of English language in a university in Nigeria were randomly selected as respondents. The respondents were asked to write an essay of 300 words within one hour. The essays were typed into Vocab Profiler of Cobb (2002) and analyzed the Lexical Frequency Profile of the respondents. The essays were also assessed by independent examiners using a standard rubric. The findings reveal that the level of productive vocabulary knowledge of the respondents is limited. The writing quality of the majority of the respondent is fair and there is a significant correlation between vocabulary and the witting quality of the subjects. The researchers posit that productive vocabulary is the predictor of writing quality and recommend various techniques through which teaching and learning of vocabulary can be improved.

Highlights

Vocabulary knowledge entails the ability to understand vocabulary in both receptive and productive dimensions
Seventy thousand words are considered as benchmark of vocabulary knowledge of an educated native speaker while second language users are expected to understand a quarter of the vocabulary size of the first language users (Nation, 2001; Laufer & Vono, 2001)
Realizing the crucial role of word knowledge in producing positive learning outcome, a number of studies were reported to have been conducted on the impact of vocabulary in second language learning, the focus of this study is to examine the productive vocabulary knowledge in L2 writing

Summary

Introduction

Vocabulary knowledge entails the ability to understand vocabulary in both receptive and productive dimensions It is a backbone of language proficiency, it is considered as crucial to the attainment of academic pursuit (Nation, 2001). They are knowledge of word features, vocabulary size, processes of word access and word organization Another three dimensions were proposed by Henriksen (1999), these involve receptive and productive, depth knowledge and vocabulary breath. Limited vocabulary hinders effective communication and constitutes a great challenge for ESL learners to express themselves in writing, in carrying out academic tasks that are usually in written This has culminated in inability to paraphrase ideas gained from various sources, but rather plagiarizing (Neo, 2009). It investigates the writing quality of the students and the relationship between vocabulary and writing quality

Literature Review

Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology

Findings

Discussions

Conclusion and Recommendations