Word Frequency Levels Research Articles

Measuring productive derivative knowledge of vietnamese EFL learners: The role of headword scoring, vocabulary breadth, and headword familiarity

A growing body of research has attempted to measure learners' productive derivative knowledge over the past few years. However, it remains unclear whether the exclusion of headwords in the scoring method would have any impact on derivative production. Moreover, the role of learners' vocabulary breadth has yet to be investigated with their headword familiarity. The present study thus filled in these gaps by exploring the extent to which Vietnamese EFL learners (N = 73) produced the derivatives of 90 headwords in a decontextualized form-recall test. The participants' scores were later examined in light of their vocabulary receptive knowledge (i.e., scores on the updated vocabulary levels test) and headword familiarity (i.e., knowledge of the form-meaning connections of headwords) using linear mixed-effects models. The results revealed that the learners could produce on average about one-fourth of the target derivatives, and those who mastered higher vocabulary levels produced more derived forms. However, their derivative-test performance in all examined word-frequency levels (1000–5000) differed significantly when headwords were scored and not scored. Furthermore, headword familiarity was a strong predictor of learners' production of derivatives, especially for those at higher vocabulary levels. Implications for researching derivatives and expanding L2 learners’ productive derivative knowledge are discussed.

Profiling Word Frequency and Readability of Online Learner Dictionary Definitions

This study examined 283 online learner dictionary definitions in terms of scores based on word frequency level and readability. Results revealed three findings. First, in terms of word frequency levels, definitions from the Cambridge learner dictionary incorporated fewer non-high frequency words (mid and low frequency words) compared to Oxford, Dictionary. com and Collins COBUILD learner dictionaries. Second, in terms of readability, definitions from the Random House learner dictionary were written at a significantly higher grade level compared to the other six online learner dictionaries. Third, in terms of both level of frequency words incorporated into definitions and readability grade level definitions, the Cambridge, Merriam-Webster and Longman online learner dictionaries were easier to understand compared to online learner dictionaries from Dictionary.com, Collins COBUILD, Oxford and Random House. Overall, the findings suggest both word frequency level and readability might contribute to the difficulty of online learner dictionary definitions.

Exploring the lexical profile of advanced L2 writers: Longitudinal data from the Russian Overseas Flagship program

AbstractThis study explores the lexical profile of essays written by 48 advanced learners of second language (L2) Russian who participated in the Russian Overseas Flagship, an intensive year‐long study abroad program designed to help students reach Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Level 3 proficiency in all skills. Using the lexical frequency profile and P–Lex as measures of vocabulary sophistication, the study found that over the 9 months of the program, students significantly increased their usage of words from the lowest frequency bands. This adds to previous findings that knowledge of lexical items at the 3,000–5,000 word frequency levels predicts reading proficiency at the ACTFL advanced high–superior level in Russian. However, the increase of vocabulary sophistication was not clearly correlated with improvements in the students’ writing proficiency scores, as measured on the ILR scale. A qualitative analysis of the students’ low‐frequency vocabulary usage reveals their control of native Russian vocabulary and derivational morphology. The analyses reveal the effects of writing tasks on student vocabulary usage.

2015 개정 영어과 교육과정의 성취 수준과 대학수학능력 영어 평가 수준의 일관성 문제

This paper aims to investigate the consistency between the achievement levels stated in the national curriculum of English and the national-level English test. The study first analyzed the target levels of the achievement standards and the basic word list included in the 2015 revised national curriculum according to the CEFR levels. Next, it compared them to those of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) of English that students take at the completion of public education in South Korea. The examination of the difficulty levels of the CSAT included the English reading passages from 2016 to 2019 academic years and focused on the text readability. The results indicated that the targeted achievement levels presented in the curriculum gradually increased by school levels, reaching CEFR B2 level in all language skills by completing high school education. In contrast, the English reading section of the CSAT included a significant portion of the passages whose difficulty levels were higher than CEFR B2+. The required word knowledge was also found to be about 7,000- to 8,000- word frequency levels. Based on these findings, this paper discusses factors that contribute to the lack of consistency between the national English curriculum and the test with some relevant implications.

Measuring Productive Derivational Knowledge of the Most Frequent Words

Derivational knowledge is associated with writing and speaking skills. These skills are essential for EFL students who express themselves in oral presentations or written assignments. Therefore, diagnostic measurement of productive derivational knowledge is of vital importance, especially in regard to the most frequent 1,000 word families that cover 81% and 85% of written and spoken text. This study measured 46 Iranian university EFL students’ productive derivational knowledge of the words at the 1,000 word frequency level. The findings indicate that while participants had the productive form-meaning knowledge of the words at 1,000 level, they did not seem to have extensive derivational knowledge of the same words. This assists in diagnosing area of weakness and placing instructional emphasis on high frequency words.

Word Frequency Level and Lexical Coverage in the Reading Comprehension Texts of the Malaysian University English Test

Word Frequency Level and Lexical Coverage in the Reading Comprehension Texts of the Malaysian University English Test

Cross-Linguistic Word Recognition Development Among Chinese Children: A Multilevel Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach.

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system.

EFFECTS OF NARROW READING AND LISTENING ON L2 VOCABULARY LEARNING

AbstractSixty target words were selected from two sets of graded readers. One set contained three readers with the same title,The Railway Children, and the other set, three books about Sherlock Holmes. Students chose one of the two sets to read and were given a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a five-week delayed posttest on their acquisition of spelling, aural meaning, written meaning, and use. Five fixed factors (time, frequency of word occurrence, glossing, word frequency levels, and four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge) in vocabulary learning and a random variable (the participants) were analyzed with generalized linear mixed models. The results show that the odds of improvements in the knowledge of written and aural meanings were significantly better than those for the knowledge of spelling and use. Significant interaction effects were found between time and other fixed factors, except for glossing. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed.

English vocabulary exposure in South African township schools: Pitfalls and opportunities

Background: This small-scale study investigated English vocabulary exposure from graded readers and teacher talk in Grade 3 classrooms in poorly resourced township schools in South Africa. Vocabulary is one of the key building blocks for becoming a fluent reader. Most words are learnt through incidental exposure to oral or written language. Objectives: This study is a first attempt to investigate opportunities for incidental vocabulary exposure in poorly resourced classrooms in South Africa. Method: A corpus linguistics approach was used to analyse a written corpus of 57 143 tokens and a spoken corpus of 12 242 tokens. Results: The study showed that there are vast differences between levels of written and spoken vocabulary in the classrooms and that the role for oral vocabulary exposure in classrooms is restricted. Spoken vocabulary registered above the K-3 word frequency level largely came from teachers’ read alouds of print materials. Conclusion: The study findings show that even in contexts where print exposure is limited, oral language cannot compensate for the richness of written vocabulary. Situational constraints, such as lack of books, negatively influenced the effective use of graded readers. Opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning, as well as implications for policy and further research, are discussed.

Measuring productive collocational knowledge of the most frequent words

Collocational knowledge is associated with writing and speaking skills. Productive skills are essential for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students who express themselves in oral presentations or written assignments. Therefore, diagnostic measurement of collocational knowledge is important, especially in regard to the most frequent 1,000 word families that cover 81% and 85% of written and spoken text. This study measured 46 Iranian university EAP students’ productive collocational knowledge of the words at the 1,000 word frequency level. The findings indicate that while participants had the productive form‐meaning knowledge of the words, they did not seem to have extensive collocational knowledge of the same words. This assists in diagnosing area of weakness and the degree to which instructional emphasis on high frequency words might improve their knowledge.

Explorando as diferenças de conhecimento de vocabulário de inglês como segunda língua em alunos de graduação de uma região semiurbana

This study explored the differences in receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge in terms of word frequency level and vocabulary size in undergraduate learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). A total of 90 first-year undergraduate engineering students from a semi-urban region in India participated in the study. Two quantitative vocabulary tests, the Receptive Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt et al., 2001) and the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer and Nation, 1999), were applied sequentially to the students. The first test focused on identifying receptive vocabulary size, while the second test measured productive vocabulary size. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results indicate that the students’ receptive word knowledge is higher than their productive word knowledge. Similarly, the students’ receptive vocabulary size is larger than their productive vocabulary size. Furthermore, the difference between their receptive and productive vocabulary size is 27.69%. In order to bridge this gap and increase their vocabulary knowledge and size, we recommend an activity-based, explicit vocabulary teaching approach through self- -learning, group learning and mutual learning in the regular classrooms.Keywords: vocabulary knowledge, word frequency levels, receptive and productive vocabulary size, undergraduate students.

Eye Tracking Technology in Detecting the Switch Cost in the Intra-sentential Code-Switching Contexts

Switch cost and cost site have been controversial issues in the code-switching studies. This research conducted an eye tracking experiment on eight bilingual subjects to measure their switch cost and cost site in comprehending the intra-sentential code-switching (Chinese and English) and the unilingual (pure Chinese) stimuli. The English words and their Chinese translations or equivalents were assumed as the key words in either a unilingual or an intra-sentential code-switching paragraph. These key words were located as areas of interest (AOI) with the same height and consisted of three word-frequency levels. After the experiment, the subjects were required to do a comprehension test to ensure their real understanding of the English words. Their performances in two different reading contexts were compared by adopting a paired sample t-test. Their eye movement data were validated by using 2 x 3 repeated measures ANOVA. It was revealed that: 1) the subjects’ scores in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts were higher than those in the unilingual ones, i.e. reading efficiency increased in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts; 2) word frequency had little effect on word recognition speed in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts, i.e., the least frequently used words did not necessarily take the subjects’ more time or vice versa; 3) even if a switch cost occurred(on rare occasions), it was not necessarily at the switching site, and low frequency words in alternating languages did impair performance even when the switch occurred at a sentence boundary.

Receptive vocabulary size and its relationship to EFL language skills

AbstractThis study analyses the relationship between receptive vocabulary size in upper-intermediate/advanced learners and EFL proficiency and the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Little research has been conducted on this dimension of lexical knowledge and the four skills (Staehr, 2008; Milton et al., 2010), in spite of the fact that previous studies of separate language skills have highlighted the importance of vocabulary size for language proficiency development. A sample of 42 participants was assessed by means of a receptive vocabulary size test on ten word-frequency levels (1k to 10k), and on both receptive and productive skills (oral and written). Results reveal that vocabulary size explains language proficiency to a large extent, even in learners with vocabularies of more than 5,000 words, though its influence on performance is not as strong as in learners with smaller vocabularies. At a high proficiency level, vocabulary size is closely linked to writing and is moderately correlated with reading, speaking and listening. The findings help to provide a more complete picture than earlier research by including more proficient learners in EFL settings.

The word frequency effect during sentence reading: A linear or nonlinear effect of log frequency?

The effect of word frequency on eye movement behaviour during reading has been reported in many experimental studies. However, the vast majority of these studies compared only two levels of word frequency (high and low). Here we assess whether the effect of log word frequency on eye movement measures is linear, in an experiment in which a critical target word in each sentence was at one of three approximately equally spaced log frequency levels. Separate analyses treated log frequency as a categorical or a continuous predictor. Both analyses showed only a linear effect of log frequency on the likelihood of skipping a word, and on first fixation duration. Ex-Gaussian analyses of first fixation duration showed similar effects on distributional parameters in comparing high- and medium-frequency words, and medium- and low-frequency words. Analyses of gaze duration and the probability of a refixation suggested a nonlinear pattern, with a larger effect at the lower end of the log frequency scale. However, the nonlinear effects were small, and Bayes Factor analyses favoured the simpler linear models for all measures. The possible roles of lexical and post-lexical factors in producing nonlinear effects of log word frequency during sentence reading are discussed.

Reliable Measure of Written Receptive Vocabulary Size: Using the L2 Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge as a Yardstick

This study investigates the correlations between the three measures of written receptive vocabulary size and second language (L2) depth of vocabulary knowledge to find the most reliable test of vocabulary size. Moreover, the corresponding relationship is examined for the higher and lower word-frequency bands of the three tests to find whether the correlation between the two constructs differs as a function of frequency level and task format. In so doing, Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), the monolingual and bilingual Persian versions of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST), and Word Associates Test (WAT) were administered to 122 high-proficient undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Results of Pearson correlations and linear regression analyses indicated that (a) the VLT had the highest correlation with the participants’ scores on the WAT; (b) although all the three tests of vocabulary size could significantly predict L2 depth of vocabulary knowledge, the VLT was the strongest predictor; (c) the higher word-frequency levels of the three VSTs in general, and the VLT in particular, were more predictive of L2 vocabulary depth; and (d) the 3,000-word-frequency level of the VLT, in particular, had the highest contribution to the performance on the WAT. The overall findings point to the superiority of the VLT among the three measures of vocabulary size.

The updated Vocabulary Levels Test

Abstract The Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1983; Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001) indicates the word frequency level that should be used to select words for learning. The present study involves the development and validation of two new forms of the test. The new forms consist of five levels measuring knowledge of vocabulary at the 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000 levels. Items for the tests were sourced from Nation’s (2012) BNC/COCA word lists. The research involved first identifying quality items using the data from 1,463 test takers to create two equivalent forms, and then evaluating the forms with the data from a further 250 test takers. This study also makes an initial attempt to validate the new forms using Messick’s (1989, 1995) validity framework.

The role of vocabulary breadth and depth in predicting second language descriptive writing performance

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates the interaction between vocabulary breadth and depth on the one hand and assessments of L2 learners’ descriptive writing on the other. The predictive role of these two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge in relation to the vocabulary component of the assessment was also examined. The extent to which vocabulary knowledge at various word-frequency levels predicted overall descriptive writing performance as well as scores on the vocabulary component was investigated. For this purpose, 67 English as a Foreign Language students took the Vocabulary Levels Test, Word Associates Test, and undertook two descriptive writing tasks. Results of correlations and stepwise regressions indicated that (a) vocabulary breadth was predictive of overall assessment of descriptive writing while vocabulary depth only correlated with the overall assessment; (b) vocabulary breadth was also predictive of the vocabulary component of L2 descriptive writing, but vocabulary depth was again simply correlated with this variable and (c) while mid-frequency vocabulary was correlated with, and predictive of, the overall assessment of descriptive writing, knowledge of low-frequency words was a strong factor in explaining the variance in the vocabulary component. The results are explained with reference to the emphasis on lexical diversity and sophistication in the vocabulary assessment criteria.

CLIL or time? Lexical profiles of CLIL and non-CLIL EFL learners

Recently, there has been considerable research concerning the effect of CLIL on English language learners’ competence. However, it remains unclear if the positive effects found are due to CLIL or to time. To clarify this issue, this paper focuses on the vocabulary output of CLIL and non-CLIL EFL learners after an equal number of hours of English exposure. The objectives were twofold: (1) to ascertain whether the CLIL group retrieves a higher number of English words than the non-CLIL group; (2) to determine whether the two groups produce the same or different words. The sample comprised 70 Spanish EFL learners in their 8th and 10th year of secondary education. The data collection instrument was a lexical availability task consisting of ten prompts. The data were edited, coded, and subjected to quantitative and qualitative analyses. The results showed that the CLIL group retrieved a higher number of words than the non-CLIL group. However, both groups exhibited similarities concerning most and least productive prompts, first word responses, word frequency, and word level. The findings suggest a need to conduct equal comparisons of CLILs and non-CLIL groups as well as to examine the task effect, and the vocabulary input received by learners.

Examining second language receptive knowledge of collocation and factors that affect learning

This study investigated Vietnamese EFL learners’ knowledge of verb–noun and adjective–noun collocations at the first three 1,000 word frequency levels, and the extent to which five factors (node word frequency, collocation frequency, mutual information score, congruency, and part of speech) predicted receptive knowledge of collocation. Knowledge of single-word items at the same word frequency levels was also examined. The results indicated that the participants were not close to a level of mastery of collocational knowledge at any word frequency level; knew less than 50% of each type of collocation overall; and that their knowledge of collocation significantly decreased at each level. The analysis also revealed that there were significant large positive correlations between knowledge of collocations and single-word items, and that node word frequency was the strongest predictor of receptive knowledge of collocation.

Recognition of high frequency words from speech as a predictor of L2 listening comprehension

Abstract This paper investigates the relationship between recognition of high frequency words from speech and second language (L2) listening comprehension among 167 tertiary level Chinese learners of English. It also interrogates the extent to which the ability to recognise words from speech contributes to the prediction of L2 listening comprehension scores. Word recognition from speech (WRS) was assessed with a partial dictation test which targeted high frequency vocabulary. These target words were categorised as belonging to either the first, second or third thousand word frequency levels through comparison with the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) word family lists. L2 listening comprehension was assessed with a version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Multiple regression analysis revealed that recognition of words from the third thousand frequency level alone could predict 52% of the variance observed in the listening comprehension scores. Recognition scores for words below the third thousand frequency range added very little unique predictive power to the regression model. This was the case despite word recognition scores for the first, second and third thousand frequency ranges strongly correlating with listening comprehension scores. Findings suggest the ability to recognise high frequency words from speech is predictive of the aural modality specific word knowledge indicative of successful L2 listening comprehension. Pedagogical implications and applications are discussed.