The present study investigates the use of English verb‐noun collocations in the writing of native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency levels. For this purpose, we compiled a learner corpus that ...consists of about 300,000 words of argumentative and descriptive essays. For comparison purposes, we selected LOCNESS, a corpus of young adult native speakers of English. We retrieved the 220 most frequently occurring nouns in the LOCNESS corpus and in the learner corpus, created concordances for them, and extracted verb‐noun collocations. Subsequently, we performed two types of comparisons: learners were compared with native speakers on the frequency of collocation use and learners were compared with other learners of different second‐language proficiencies on the frequency and correctness of collocations. The data revealed that learners at all three proficiency levels produced far fewer collocations than native speakers, that the number of collocations increased only at the advanced level, and that errors, particularly interlingual ones, continued to persist even at advanced levels of proficiency. We discuss the results in light of the nature of collocations and communicative learning and suggest some pedagogical implications.
It is generally agreed by vocabulary researchers that learning vocabulary in a foreign language is a daunting task. Both researchers and language teachers have been searching for effective methods to ...facilitate the acquisition of thousands of words that are necessary to narrow the gap between the vocabulary learners know and the vocabulary they need. For the past decade, we have been witnessing a heated debate between the advocates of ‘vocabulary-through-input’ position and the proponents of word-focused instruction.
Abstract
The study explores the usefulness of the word family as the unit of counting in studies of lexical coverage and comprehension. It determines the proportion of texts covered by the various ...members of a word family, that is, basewords, inflected words, and derived words, and analyzes the contribution of the affixed words to lexical thresholds. This exploration was performed by a text analysis computer program called Morpholex that analyzes the entire lexis of an entered text, pulling out all words bearing prefixes and suffixes and counting the unaffixed words as basewords. We analyzed a variety of texts, academic and narrative, authentic and simplified, and calculated the number and percentage of basewords and affixes in each text. We also located the most frequent affixes in our text corpus and demonstrated which affixes and how many contributed to 95 per cent and 98 per cent text coverages. Our results show that reaching the lexical thresholds for reading does not require the knowledge of most of the derived words in a word family since a small number of frequent affixes will provide the necessary coverage together with the basewords and inflections.
This study examined how well second language (L2) recall and recognition vocabulary tests correlated with a reading test, how well each vocabulary test discriminated between reading proficiency ...levels, and how accurate each test was in predicting reading proficiency when compared with corpus studies. A total of 116 college-level learners of English as a foreign language took a reading test and 2 vocabulary size tests: meaning recall and meaning recognition. Participants were divided into 4 reading proficiency levels based on the reading scores. We correlated the reading scores with the 2 vocabulary scores, compared the 4 reading groups on each vocabulary test, and compared the vocabulary size of each of the reading proficiency groups with corpus studies. Both vocabulary tests were good predictors of reading, but the recognition test fared slightly better. We introduce the notion of 'comprehension vocabulary' and suggest that a recall test is more appropriate for measuring sight vocabulary while a recognition test is more appropriate for measuring comprehension vocabulary.
The realization by applied linguists that second language learners cannot achieve high levels of grammatical competence from entirely meaning centered instruction has led them to propose that ...learners need to focus on form, i.e. to attend to linguistic elements during a communicative activity (Long 1991, De Keyser 1998, Norris and Ortega 2000, Ellis 2001). However, most advocates of Focus on Form (FonF), have also proscribed Focus on Forms (FonFs), the systematic teaching of isolated grammatical items and rules. So far, FonF research has been concerned with grammatical, not lexical, instruction. In this paper, which was originally presented as a plenary session at the 2004 EUROSLA conference, I examine the need for Focus on Form and the proscription of Focus on Forms from the vocabulary learning perspective.
First, I argue that, similarly to grammar, comprehensible input is insufficient for acquiring vocabulary, and consequently Focus on Form is an essential component of instruction. I base my argument on the fallacy of the assumptions which underlie the vocabulary-through-input hypothesis: the noticing assumption, the guessing ability assumption, the guessing-retention link assumption and the cumulative gain assumption. Second, I defend Focus on Forms and argue against the claim that attention to form must be motivated by and carried out within a communicative task environment. The defense is based on the nature of lexical competence, which is perceived as a combination of different aspects of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary use, speed of lexical access and strategic competence. The two arguments above will be supported by empirical evidence from three types of vocabulary learning studies: (a) the ‘classic’ task embedded FonF, (b) task related FonFs, and (c) ‘pure’ FonFs studies, unrelated to any task.
In this article, we describe the development and trial of a bilingual computerized test of vocabulary size, the number of words the learner knows, and strength, a combination of four aspects of ...knowledge of meaning that are assumed to constitute a hierarchy of difficulty: passive recognition (easiest), active recognition, passive recall, and active recall (hardest). The participants were 435 learners of English as a second language. We investigated whether the above hierarchy was valid and which strength modality correlated best with classroom language performance. Results showed that the hypothesized hierarchy was present at all word frequency levels, that passive recall was the best predictor of classroom language performance, and that growth in vocabulary knowledge was different for the different strength modalities.
Challenges basic assumptions underlying the claim that reading is the major source of vocabulary acquisition in a second language, including the noticing assumption, the guessing ability assumption, ...the guessing-retention link assumption, and the cumulative gain assumption. Reports on three experiments in which vocabulary gains from reading were compared with gains from word-focused tasks. (Author/VWL)
This article describes the development and validation of the new CATSS (Computer Adaptive Test of Size and Strength), which measures vocabulary knowledge in four modalities - productive recall, ...receptive recall, productive recognition, and receptive recognition. In the first part of the paper we present the assumptions that underlie the test - the importance of form-meaning link and the concept of four degrees of knowledge that are implicationally scaled. In the second part of the paper we present the core features of the test in terms of item selection, test format, scoring, and feedback to learners. The third part of the paper describes the process of test validation with 453 students of three English proficiency levels. We adopted the argument-based approach to validation and performed Rasch analyses, Cronbach's alpha, and multiple sets of ANOVAs and Post-hoc tests. The results of these analyses demonstrate the stability, sensitivity, and adequacy of the scoring system, the potential generalizability of the scores, the extrapolation of the scores as indicators of learners' proficiency level and expected vocabulary sizes and the possibility of using the test when making placement considerations or assessing progress.
The article investigated how the inclusion of loanwords in vocabulary size tests affected the test scores of two L1 groups of EFL learners: Hebrew and Japanese. New BNC- and COCA-based vocabulary ...size tests were constructed in three modalities: word form recall, word form recognition, and word meaning recall. Depending on the test modality, the tests measured the knowledge of 8,000 lemmas or word families through 80 randomly sampled items, 6 of which were loanwords in Hebrew and 13 in Japanese. Therefore, we added the same number of non-loanwords from corresponding frequencies and performed within-subject comparisons between the scores of the original tests with loanwords and their non-loanword versions in which non-loanwords replaced loanwords. The comparisons were done for each L1 group, at each test modality, and at three L2 proficiency levels, as defined by the total non-loanword test score. We also compared the two L1 groups on the degree of loanword effect. In both L1 groups, tests with loanwords yielded significantly higher scores in all test modalities and among most proficiency groups. Less able participants gained more from the presence of loanwords. However, loanwords differently influenced the size estimates of the two L1 groups. Implications are suggested for creating vocabulary size tests and making inferences from vocabulary test data.
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