Implications For Vocabulary Instruction Research Articles

Lexical Profile of the Moroccan National High-stakes Baccalaureate Reading Test Materials: A Corpus-based Approach

Lexical profiling studies are concerned with the lexical breadth required to achieve 95% and 98% coverage of various kinds of verbal or textual materials (Webb, 2021). While prior research has concentrated on the lexical load of EFL textbooks (Nguyen, 2020; Sun & Dang, 2020), scarce research has examined the lexical demands of local proficiency tests. This study investigated the lexical profile of Moroccan national reading exams in relation to coverage in Nation’s (2012) BNC/COCA frequency wordlists. To achieve these objectives, a corpus of 10,536 tokens, covering all the reading materials from 2008 to 2022, was compiled. Moreover, the Vocabulary Size Test (Nation & Belgar, 2007) was administered to 72 baccalaureate students to measure their vocabulary size. The findings of an examination utilising the Antwordprofiler and 11 BNC/COCA lists revealed that vocabulary sizes of 3,000 word families and 4,000 word families, including proper nouns, are needed to achieve 97% and 98% coverage rates in the corpus. Additionally, findings of the descriptive statistics showed that the receptive vocabulary size of the respondents (n=72) was 2,015 words. These results showed that Moroccan baccalaureate students’ lexical breadth is insufficient to attain 95% coverage. Implications for vocabulary instruction in Moroccan EFL classrooms are discussed.

Russian’s Most Frequent Words and Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

Russian’s Most Frequent Words and Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

DDL 교수법이 영어 생산적 및 수용적 어휘 지식과 읽기 능력에 미치는 효과 연구

The current study aims to compare the effects of a DDL approach with the effects of an explicit approach using concordances on the improvement of productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge and reading skills and to investigate the changes caused by the effects of the DDL approach over time. The study involved two groups of high school students from higher-level classes. According to the results of an independent t-test. DDL was more effective for productive vocabulary knowledge over the shorter term. In contrast, from the results of a dependent t-test, only DDL was effective for receptive vocabulary knowledge over shorter term, while both approaches were effective for longer-term productive vocabulary knowledge. Data analysis from a repeated measures ANOVA indicated that there was a statistically significant interaction effect between the two approaches and time. In addition, DDL was more significant for reading skills over a longer-term, and there was a correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading ability. Implications for vocabulary instruction in DDL are discussed. (Chungnam National University · Hanbat High School)

Orthographic facilitation in oral vocabulary learning: effects of language backgrounds and orthographic type

Two experiments investigated whether exposure to Chinese characters and pinyin would facilitate oral vocabulary learning for Chinese as a first (L1) and second (L2) language learners. In Experiment 1, 48 second Chinese graders studied 15 made-up associations between spoken labels and pictures accompanied either by no orthography, by pinyin, or regular characters in a repeated measures design. Pictures prompted recall of spoken labels without orthography present on tests. Results showed that both regular characters and pinyin boosted recall over no orthography. In Experiment 2, 19 American undergraduates as Chinese foreign language learners learned the same 15 label-picture associations in a similar design. Results showed pinyin facilitation, but no character facilitation. The findings highlight the influence of L1 on the role of orthography in oral vocabulary learning in L2, and have implications for vocabulary instruction in Chinese as L1 and L2 learners.

Lexical Coverage of TED Talks: Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

Teachers of English are often in search of authentic audio and video materials that promote learners’ listening comprehension and vocabulary development. TED Talks, a set of freely available web presentations, could be a useful resource to promote vocabulary instruction. The present replication study examines the lexical coverage of TED Talks by using a corpus comprised of TED Talks presentations. Transcripts of 400 presentations (a total running time of 100 hr and 19 min) were analyzed to determine the vocabulary size necessary to understand 95% and 98% of the words in TED Talks presentations. The findings suggest that 4,000 word families (plus proper nouns and marginal words) provided 95% coverage, and 8,000 word families (plus proper nouns and marginal words) provided 98% of TED Talks presentations. The current study confirms the findings from previous studies that analyzed TED Talks (Coxhead & Walls, ) and academic spoken English (Dang & Webb, ), suggesting that a wider range of vocabulary (closer to vocabulary coverage for written texts) is necessary to watch and comprehend TED Talks presentations. Based on the findings, the present article provides English language teachers with several learner‐friendly suggestions about how TED Talks presentations could be used to expand learners’ vocabulary.

The Effects of Play-Based Intervention on Vocabulary Acquisition by Preschoolers at Risk for Reading and Language Delays

Closing the vocabulary gap for young children at risk for reading and language delays due to low socioeconomic status may have far reaching effects, as the relationship between early vocabulary knowledge and later academic achievement has been well-established. Vocabulary instruction for young children at risk for reading and language delays during classroom play is understudied, but appears to be a useful context for such interventions. A multiple probe design across behaviors replicated across participants was conducted to evaluate the effects of Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) techniques embedded in play sessions on target vocabulary word acquisition for preschool participants. Participants acquired target word sets in an average of 14 sessions, which, in addition to a book with target vocabulary, included interventionist’s use of the words in conversation and prompts to use target words in play routines. Implications for vocabulary instruction during play and future research are included.

Measuring word retrieval deficits in a multilingual child with SLI: Is there a better language?

Abstract Lexical word retrieval was examined in a single case study of a multilingual child (I.S.) with specific language impairment (SLI) for Bulgarian, English, and Greek, guided by theory-driven conceptualizations of the multilingual lexicon and word retrieval processing. An equivalent picture naming task was used across languages. Word retrieval impairments were measured in relation to lexical factors of the target words and participant variables. The data were then compared to three groups of children: two groups of multilingual peers with typical language development (TLD), age-matched (n = 6) and language-matched (n = 6), and a group of children with SLI without a multilingual background (n = 6). The results revealed that the lexical retrieval deficit manifested itself in all three languages. These findings strengthen previous claims that lexical retrieval deficits are comparable across languages and could potentially serve as a non-language specific clinical marker across different languages: Both storage and retrieval processes are assumed to underlie deficits retrieving words. Implications for vocabulary instruction in the multilingual classroom setting are discussed.

Teaching Abstract Vocabulary with the Keyword Method:

Twenty-five adolescents with learning disabilities were randomly assigned to either a keyword mnemonic condition or an experimenter-directed rehearsal condition and were individually taught 16 difficult vocabulary words, including 8 concrete and 8 abstract words. After an instructional period, students were given a test of literal recall as well as a comprehension test of their ability to apply newly acquired vocabulary words in a different context. Results indicated that mnemonically trained students outperformed control students on both abstract and concrete words, and on recall tests as well as on comprehension tests. Implications for vocabulary instruction as well as theories of learning disabilities are discussed.