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Reflecting growth in research interest in second language vocabulary over the past 30 years, this edited volume explores the current themes and possible future directions in second lan-guage vocabulary research. The collection brings together review papers and quantitative studies, and considers vocabulary in the con-texts of teaching, learning and assessment. Key themes explored in the volume include multidimensionality of vocabulary knowledge, the nature of word learnability, the interface between receptive vocabulary knowledge and productive vocabulary use, the partial-to-precise continuum of vocabulary knowledge, conditions favouring vocabulary learning and use, and the use of corpora to develop word lists to inform second language teaching. The themes pre-sented in this volume reflect current thinking and research avenues at the interface between research enquiry and second language teaching practice.

ISBN 978-3-0343-1108-3

David Hirsh is senior lecturer in TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages) at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on vocabulary development, academic adjustment, and indigenous language revitalization. He has published in Reading in a Foreign Language and Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, and in the volumes Teaching Academic Writing: An intro-duction for teachers of second language writers (2009) and Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (2010). He is co-editor of University of Sydney Papers in TESOL.

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Reflecting growth in research interest in second language vocabulary over the past 30 years, this edited volume explores the current themes and possible future directions in second lan-guage vocabulary research. The collection brings together review papers and quantitative studies, and considers vocabulary in the con-texts of teaching, learning and assessment. Key themes explored in the volume include multidimensionality of vocabulary knowledge, the nature of word learnability, the interface between receptive vocabulary knowledge and productive vocabulary use, the partial-to-precise continuum of vocabulary knowledge, conditions favouring vocabulary learning and use, and the use of corpora to develop word lists to inform second language teaching. The themes pre-sented in this volume reflect current thinking and research avenues at the interface between research enquiry and second language teaching practice.

ISBN 978-3-0343-1108-3

David Hirsh is senior lecturer in TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages) at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on vocabulary development, academic adjustment, and indigenous language revitalization. He has published in Reading in a Foreign Language and Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, and in the volumes Teaching Academic Writing: An intro-duction for teachers of second language writers (2009) and Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (2010). He is co-editor of University of Sydney Papers in TESOL.

li155 li155 Studies in Language and CommunicationLinguistic Insights

Pete

r La

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David Hirsh (ed.)

Current Perspectivesin Second LanguageVocabulary Research

www.peterlang.com

li155

Current Perspectivesin Second Language Vocabulary Research

Studies in Language and Communication

Edited by Maurizio Gotti, University of Bergamo

Volume 155

Linguistic Insights

PETER LANGBern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien

AdVISORY BOARd

Vijay Bhatia (Hong Kong) Christopher Candlin (Sydney)david Crystal (Bangor)Konrad Ehlich (Berlin / München)Jan Engberg (Aarhus)Norman Fairclough (Lancaster)John Flowerdew (Hong Kong) Ken Hyland (Hong Kong) Roger Lass (Cape Town)Matti Rissanen (Helsinki) Françoise Salager-Meyer (Mérida, Venezuela) Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff)Susan Šarcevic (Rijeka)Lawrence Solan (New York) Peter M. Tiersma (Los Angeles)

^

PETER LANGBern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien

david Hirsh (ed.)

Current Perspectives in SecondLanguage Vocabulary Research

ISSN 14248689ISBN 9783034311083 pb. ISBN 9783035103793 eBookUS-ISBN 0-8204-8382-6

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net

All rights reserved.All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, withoutthe permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

Printed in Switzerland

Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothekdie deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the deutsche National-bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Current perspectives in second language vocabulary research / david Hirsh (ed.).p. cm. – (Linguistic insights: studies in language and communication; v.155)Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-3-03-431108-31. Second language acquisition. 2. Vocabulary--Study and teaching.3. Language and languages--Study and teaching. I. Hirsh, david, P118.2.C865 2012401’.93–dc23

2012005696

Contents

DAVID HIRSH Introduction .......................................................................................... 7

Section 1 The Research Field

DAVID HIRSH Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions ................... 13

Section 2 Constructs of Vocabulary Knowledge

HUA ZHONG Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge: Development from Receptive to Productive Use ............................... 23

CHEN-CHUN LIN The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts .............................. 57

Section 3 Conditions for Learning

YU-TSE LEE / DAVID HIRSH Quality and Quantity of Exposure in L2 Vocabulary Learning ......... 79

CHEN-CHUN LIN / DAVID HIRSH Manipulating Instructional Method: The Effect on Productive Vocabulary Use ....................................... 117

Section 4 Corpus-based Research

WARREN MATSUOKA Searching for the Right Words: Creating Word Lists to Inform EFL Learning .................................. 151

Notes on Contributors ....................................................................... 179

DAVID HIRSH

Introduction

I have observed a steady increase over the past 20 years in the number of academics embracing an interest in second language vocabulary research, and this has seen a corresponding rise over this time in the number of higher degree research students identifying vocabulary as the focus for their research. This volume is the product of growing research interest in the contribution of vocabulary to second language acquisition.

In this volume, Hirsh reviews second language vocabulary re-search to date to identify current themes, and then considers possible future directions to guide novice and accomplished second language researchers in identifying suitable research topics in the area of vo-cabulary studies. Zhong explores the current model of second lan-guage vocabulary learning as multidimensional, taking account of learner variability in terms of partial-precise, receptive-productive, and depth dimensions (see Henriksen 1999), and in doing so offers a critique of assessment tools used to measure vocabulary knowledge. Lin sheds light on the importance of properties of word form in the process of learning L2 words (see Bogaards/Laufer 2004), reviewing the findings of studies into the role of orthography (word decoding, L1 cognates), morphology (affixes, derivatives) and word length (number of syllables) in L2 word learnability for specific L1 groups.

Lee and Hirsh adopt a quantitative approach to consider Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis in the design of their comparison of the effects of quantity and quality of exposure to new words on vocabulary learning, with use of immediate and delayed post-test measures of word acquisition. Lin and Hirsh use quantitative data to measure the effect of explicit and incidental approaches to word learning on the quantity and accuracy of target word use in a subsequent writing task (see Lee/Muncie 2006).

8 David Hirsh

Matsuoka presents an overview of corpus-based research aimed at identifying and compiling lists of the most frequent and uniformly dispersed words occurring in L1 academic texts for use in EFL con-texts – a methodology based on the premise that L1 language use can serve as a model for L2 vocabulary learning. How such word lists could be used to inform EFL pedagogy and ELT materials design is also discussed.

The contributors identify themselves as TESOL researchers and share a concern for the teaching and learning environment. This shared concern has resulted in a volume with clear implications for teaching and learning, as informed by the recent TESOL literature and research findings. The contributors also share an awareness of the need to tailor the teaching and learning process to suit local needs, constraints and opportunities. Thus, they wish teachers (and their learners) to reflect on the significance of theory to their own teaching and learning environment, and adopt practices that are both informed by theory and sensitive to the local context.

It is hoped that this volume inspires prospective and accom-plished TESOL researchers to reflect on existing theory as the starting point for defining important issues and current concerns, and then explore ways in which their own program of research could contribute in a meaningful, albeit modest, way to our developing understanding of the lexical component of second language acquisition.

References

Bogaards, Paul / Laufer, Batia 2004. Introduction. In Bogaards, Paul / Laufer, Batia (eds) Vocabulary in a Second Language: Selection, Acquisition, and Testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, vi-xiv.

Henriksen, Birgit 1999. Three dimensions of vocabulary development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21/2, 303-317.

Introduction 9 Laufer, Batia / Hulstijn, Jan 2001. Incidental vocabulary acquisition in

a second language: The effect of task-induced involvement load. Applied Linguistics 22, 1-26.

Lee, Siok H. / Muncie, James 2006. From receptive to productive: Improving ESL learners’ use of vocabulary in a postreading composition task. TESOL Quarterly 40/2, 295-320.

Section 1 The Research Field

DAVID HIRSH

Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions

1. Introduction

Prospective research students with an interest in second language vo-cabulary studies frequently ask me for a list of suitable topics as a starting point for developing their own research trajectories. I suggest they refer to a number of texts which have attempted to represent this field of research. These include Nation’s (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, the introduction to Bogaards and Laufer’s (2004) Vocabulary in a Second Language, Hirsh’s (2010) chapter titled Researching vocabulary appearing in the Continuum Compan-ion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics and Schmitt’s (2010) Researching Vocabulary. In addition, vocabulary research is regularly published in the leading TESOL and Applied Linguistics journals, with occasional special issues devoted to vocabulary research, and these are useful starting points for research-focused reading.

This chapter identifies some of the more prominent current themes in second language vocabulary research, and then moves on to present possible areas for future research, and in doing so brings the reader in touch with some of the key thinkers and their publications in this area of second language research.

14 David Hirsh

2. Current themes

One important theme in second language vocabulary research is measurement of second language vocabulary knowledge. This has been driven by recognition of the impact of learner vocabulary size on the quality of language comprehension and use, and by interest in tailoring programs of study to suit the specific needs of groups of lan-guage learners. Vocabulary tests have been developed to measure the quantity of vocabulary knowledge, reporting ‘vocabulary size’ (see Laufer/Nation 1995; Laufer/Nation 1999; Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000; Nation 1983) and to measure the quality of vocabulary knowledge, reporting ‘depth of knowledge’ (see Haastrup/Henriksen 2000; Meara 1996; Read 1993, 1998, 2004).

The development of such assessment tools has given rise to a series of studies measuring learners’ vocabulary knowledge and learn-ers’ vocabulary growth in terms of size (e.g. Nurweni/Read 1999; Zhong/Hirsh 2009) and in terms of depth (e.g. Qian/Schedl 2004).

A second important theme in second language vocabulary re-search is the nature of word knowledge, with lines of enquiry investi-gating the dimension of receptive to productive knowledge (see Laufer 1991, 1998; Lee/Muncie 2006), and the dimension of partial to precise knowledge (see Barcroft 2008; Barcroft/Rott 2010; Henriksen 1999). Wesche and Paribakht’s (1996) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale is an attempt to measure second language vocabulary knowledge in a way which takes account of its multidimensional nature.

Another important theme in second language vocabulary re-search is the process of learning, with an interest in the effect of inci-dental and explicit forms of learning, and an interest in the effect of learner involvement. Cases are presented in the literature for develop-ing vocabulary knowledge incidentally through exposure to compre-hensible input (see Nagy/Anderson/Herman 1987; Krashen 1989) and through explicit instruction focusing on target vocabulary (see Laufer 2001). A case is also presented for engaging learners deeply in the process of vocabulary learning (see Joe 1995; Newton 1995), giving

Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions 15

rise to the concepts of task-induced involvement and deep processing evident in Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis.

A further important theme in second language vocabulary re-search is the identification of the most suitable words for language learning based on how words appear in texts written for native speakers of English. Word lists have been developed which have guided ESL learning (see Thorndike 1921; Thorndike/Lorge 1944; West 1953), informed the development of specialised word lists (see Coxhead 2000; Coxhead/Hirsh 2007), and provided lexical categories for analyzing word use in texts (see Hirsh/Nation 1992; Matsuoka/Hirsh 2010).

3. New directions

There has been significant research interest to date in describing and measuring vocabulary knowledge, and yet there remains work to be done in this area. One area worthy of future attention is understanding better the nature of vocabulary learning, particularly in terms of trans-fer of word knowledge from receptive to productive use, and identify-ing ways of measuring this transfer (see Zhong, this volume, for a review of this area). Related to this is a need for improved understand-ing of the concept of partial word knowledge, as opposed to precise word knowledge, and how this relates to the likelihood of a word be-ing used productively (see Lin, this volume, for a review of this area).

There is also a need for improved understanding of the concept of ‘depth’ of vocabulary knowledge in terms of measurable differ-ences between learners in how well they know individual words (see Henriksen 1999 for more on this topic area). In addition, there is scope to explore in more detail Meara’s model of productive knowledge measurement based on ecological sampling of animal species numbers (see Meara/Alcoy 2010) in an attempt to accurately account for and measure the productive lexicon.

Vocabulary is dealt with in research as separate word forms, as semantic family groups, in the company of other words (i.e. colloca-

16 David Hirsh

tions and concordance tables), and as recurring multiword sequences or ‘lexical bundles’ (see Biber 2006). In a related area, there is a de-veloping interest in the concepts of connected words, semantic maps and semantic networks (see Meara 2009), and in the lexical effect of knowing one word on the learning of others (see Laufer 1990). The view of vocabulary knowledge as a complex network provides a start-ing point for considerations of how to describe and capture the interre-latedness of word knowledge in a way which accounts for observed patterns of vocabulary learning and vocabulary use.

I expect that, in the coming years, there will be more interest in the process of vocabulary loss (see Meara 2004), and how this is in-fluenced by choices learners make in their continuing involvement with the target language following completion of a program of lan-guage learning. This would reflect the expected rise of importance of autonomous and self-directed learning in the context of improved online and interactive digital learning environments.

4. Final words

Thoughts about the number of words learners require have been shaped over time by changing ideas about the purpose of second lan-guage learning. The search for effective approaches to vocabulary development needs to consider the overall purpose of language learn-ing for the learners involved, as this will guide teachers in setting ap-propriate vocabulary learning objectives and designing an appropriate program to encourage meaningful vocabulary learning.

The search for effective approaches to vocabulary development also needs to consider the opportunities provided for vocabulary learn-ing in and out of the classroom environment, and to identify ways to assist learners in maximising those opportunities. There is the possi-bility now for teachers to develop vocabulary lists suited to their learners through development of a specialised corpus (see Ward 1999), and the possibility for teachers to identify reading material


suited to their learners through lexical analysis of a range of texts (see Hirsh/Coxhead 2009). There is also the possibility for learners to ac-cess online resources to report on their use of vocabulary in writing and to investigate how specific words appear in texts written for na-tive speaking audiences (see Cobb n.d.).

The expansion in second language vocabulary research has pro-vided teachers with empirical data and assessment tools to inform their decisions about what words to teach and how to embed vocabu-lary learning into the broader program of language learning. It is im-portant to keep in mind, however, that words need a context in order to develop into language, and as the vocabulary size of learners in-creases, so should the complexity of the language they are engaging with and producing.

References

Barcroft, Joe 2008. Second language partial word form learning in the written mode. Estudios de Linguistica Aplicada 26/47, 53-72.

Barcroft, Joe / Rott, Susanne 2010. Partial word form learning in the written mode in L2 German and Spanish. Applied Linguistics 31/5, 623-650.

Biber, Douglas 2006. University Language: A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Bogaards, Paul / Laufer, Batia 2004. Introduction. In Bogaards, Paul / Laufer, Batia (eds) Vocabulary in a Second Language: Selection, Acquisition, and Testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, vi-xiv.

Cobb, Tom n.d. Compleat Lexical Tutor. Available online at <www. lextutor.ca>.

Coxhead, Averil 2000. A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly 34, 213-238.

Coxhead, Averil / Hirsh, David 2007. A pilot science-specific word list. French Review of Applied Linguistics 7, 65-78.

18 David Hirsh

Haastrup, Kirsten / Henriksen, Birgit 2000. Vocabulary acquisition: Acquiring depth of knowledge through network building. Inter-national Journal of Applied Linguistics 10, 221-240.


Hirsh, David 2010. Researching vocabulary. In Paltridge, Brian / Phakiti, Aek (eds) Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. London: Continuum, 222-239.

Hirsh, David / Coxhead, Averil 2009. Ten ways of focussing on science-specific vocabulary in EAP classrooms. EA Journal 25/1, 5-16.

Hirsh, David / Nation, Paul 1992. What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a Foreign Lan-guage 8/2, 689-696.

Joe, Angela 1995. Text-based tasks and incidental vocabulary learn-ing. Second Language Research 11, 149-158.

Krashen, Stephen 1989. We acquire vocabulary and spelling by read-ing: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis. Modern Lan-guage Journal 74, 440-464.

Laufer, Batia 1990. Words you know: How they affect the words you learn. In Fisiak, Jacek (ed.) Further Insights into Contrastive Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 573-593.

Laufer, Batia 1991. The development of L2 lexis in the expression of the advanced learner. Modern Language Journal 75/4, 440-448.

Laufer, Batia 1998. The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: Same or different? Applied Linguistics 19/2, 255-271.

Laufer, Batia 2001. Reading, word-focused activities and incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language. Prospect 16, 44-54.

Laufer, Batia / Hulstijn, Jan 2001. Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The effect of task-induced involvement load. Applied Linguistics 22, 1-26.

Laufer, Batia / Nation, Paul 1995. Vocabulary size and use: Lexical rich-ness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics 16, 307-322.

Laufer, Batia / Nation, Paul 1999. A vocabulary size test of controlled productive ability. Language Testing 16, 33-51.



Matsuoka, Warren / Hirsh, David 2010. Vocabulary learning through reading: Does an ELT course book provide good opportunities? Reading in a Foreign Language 22/1, 56-70.

Meara, Paul 1996. The dimensions of lexical competence. In Brown, Gillian / Malmkjaer, Kirsten / Williams, John (eds) Perform-ance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 35-53.

Meara, Paul 2004. Modelling vocabulary loss. Applied Linguistics 25, 137-155.

Meara Paul 2009. Connected Words: Word Associations and Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Meara, Paul / Alcoy, Juan 2010. Words as species: An alternative approach to estimating productive vocabulary size. Reading in a Foreign Language 22/1, 222-236.

Meara, Paul / Fitzpatrick, Tess 2000. Lex30: An improved method of assessing productive vocabulary in an L2. System 28/1, 19-30.

Nagy, William E. / Anderson, Richard C. / Herman, Patricia A. 1987. Learning word meanings from context during normal reading. American Educational Research Journal 24, 237-270.

Nation, Paul 1983. Testing and teaching vocabulary. Guidelines 5, 12-25. Nation, Paul 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press. Newton, Jonathan 1995. Task-based interaction and incidental vocabulary

learning: A case study. Second Language Research 11, 159-177. Nurweni, Ari / Read, John 1999. The English vocabulary knowledge

of Indonesian university students. English for Specific Purposes 18, 161-175.

Qian, David / Schedl, Mary 2004. Evaluation of an in-depth vocabu-lary knowledge measure for assessing reading performance. Language Testing 21, 28-52.

Read, John 1993. The development of a new measure of L2 vocabulary knowledge. Language Testing 10/3, 355-371.

20 David Hirsh

Read, John 1998. Validating a test to measure depth of vocabulary knowledge. In Kunnan, Antony (ed.) Validation in Language Assessment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 41-60.

Read, John 2004. Plumbing the depths: How should the construct of vocabulary knowledge be defined? In Bogaards, Paul / Laufer, Batia (eds) Vocabulary in a Second Language: Selection, Acqui-sition, and Testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 209-227.

Schmitt, Norbert 2010. Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Re-search Manual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Thorndike, Edward L. 1921. The Teacher’s Word Book. New York City: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Thorndike, Edward L. / Lorge, Irving 1944. The Teacher’s Word Book of 30,000 Words. New York City: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Ward, Jeremy 1999. How large a vocabulary do EAP engineering students need? Reading in a Foreign Language 12, 309-324.

Wesche, Marjorie / Paribakht, Tahereh Sima 1996. Assessing second language vocabulary knowledge: Depth versus breadth. Cana-dian Modern Language Review 53/1, 13-40.

West, Michael 1953. A General Service List of English Words. Lon-don: Longman, Green & Co.

Zhong, Hua / Hirsh, David 2009. Vocabulary growth in an English as a foreign language context. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL 4, 85-113.

Section 2 Constructs of Vocabulary Knowledge

HUA ZHONG

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge: Development from Receptive to Productive Use

1. Introduction

Vocabulary, as an essential building block of language, has been found to predict success in reading (Laufer 1992; Lervåg/Aukrust 2010; Qian/Schedl 2004), listening (Stæhr 2009), speaking (Daller van Hout/Treffers-Daller 2003; Hilton 2008; Yu 2010), writing (Laufer/ Nation 1995; Yu 2010) and in general academic performance (Harrington/Carey 2009; Zareva/Schwanenflugel/Nikolova 2005). One stream within the broad field of second language vocabulary re-search which is receiving growing interest is the interface between receptive and productive vocabulary use (see Fan 2000; Laufer 1998; Webb 2005), seen as an ‘intriguing’ area to explore (Henriksen/ Haastrup 1998: 77).

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the theoretical basis for research into the interface, and to introduce test instruments available for future research into the development of vocabulary knowledge from receptive to productive use. This chapter will first describe vo-cabulary knowledge as a multi-dimensional construct and define each dimension of this construct and its containing aspects of vocabulary knowledge. It will also critically review vocabulary assessment in-struments, and analyse the constructs of these instruments. Implica-tions for vocabulary teaching and assessment will be discussed at the end of the chapter.

24 Hua Zhong

2. Quality and quantity of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge

Research looking into the development of receptive and productive vocabulary use is primarily associated with size (see Gallego/Llach 2009; Laufer 1998; Laufer/Goldstein 2004). Many research findings show that L2 learners’ receptive vocabulary size is larger than their productive vocabulary size (Laufer 1998; Laufer/Goldstein 2004; Laufer/Paribakht 1998; Webb 2008). It is assumed that gains in recep-tive vocabulary knowledge often appear before productive develop-ment (Melka 1997). Comparing two groups of high school English learners in Israel, Laufer (1998) found that learners who had a larger receptive vocabulary size also had a larger productive vocabulary size, and the gap between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge increased as the level of language proficiency improved. Laufer’s study concluded that these two types of vocabulary knowledge devel-oped at different rates – the productive vocabulary size grew slower than the receptive vocabulary size – as learners proceeded with their L2 learning.

Zhong and Hirsh (2009) revealed a different developmental pat-tern in which productive vocabulary size grew faster than receptive vocabulary size after a four-month classroom instruction period among a group of Chinese students whose English proficiency was at an intermediate level. Their study suggests, from a teaching perspec-tive, that the developmental pattern in vocabulary size could be influ-enced by the types of vocabulary learning tasks used in the classroom (see also Griffin/Harley 1996; Mondria/Wiersma 2004; Waring 1997; Webb 2005, 2009; Wei 1999).

Acknowledging the limited information about learners’ vocabu-lary knowledge that measures of vocabulary size could reveal, re-searchers began investigating further the depth of vocabulary knowl-edge in terms of receptive and productive use (see Laufer 1991; Lee/ Muncie 2006). The concept of ‘depth’ in vocabulary research is de-fined in general terms as ‘the quality of the learner’s vocabulary knowledge’ (Read 1993: 357). There are two approaches to under-

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge 25

standing the quality of vocabulary knowledge, one of which is the strength and breadth of the lexicon network (Haastrup/Henriksen 2000; Meara/Wolter 2004), and the other being the multi-aspect knowledge of a word (Ishii/Schmitt 2009; Zareva 2005).

When depth is viewed as a network construction, the number of words linked and the strength of these links are examined (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000; Meara/Wolter 2004). The bigger the net, the larger the vocabulary size; the more links between one word and an-other, the deeper the word is known (Meara 2009). The depth dimen-sion of vocabulary knowledge is measured receptively as in V_Links (Meara/Wolter 2004) which requires learners to identify association pairs of words and to report the strength of association between the words. Trials on 147 Japanese learners of English and a group of na-tive speakers suggested that there was a significant difference between the two groups with regard to their mental organizations of vocabu-lary.

A similar productive network association test known as Lex30 (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000) is claimed to be able to detect the basic de-velopmental pattern in L2 productive vocabulary (Meara 2009). The results from both receptive and productive association tests imply that learners with high vocabulary proficiency have denser and more or-ganized networks than lower proficiency language learners.

When depth is explored as a representation of multi-aspect knowledge (see Nation 1990, 2001; Richards 1976; Ringbom 1987), it includes all lexical characteristics and can also be considered as a sum of sub-knowledges (Qian 1999; Qian/Schedl 2004). Nation has pro-vided the most comprehensive list to date of aspects of vocabulary knowledge which are systematically categorized into form, meaning and use (2001: 27), as follows:

Form: pronunciation, spelling, word parts Meaning: form-meaning relationship, concept and referents, associations Use: grammatical functions, collocations, constraints on use (e.g. register, fre-quency)

In this definition, word use is considered as a component of knowing a word. Nation (2001) proposed that each of the components of knowl-

26 Hua Zhong

edge can be observed in comprehension and use. The research in measuring either size or single/multiple aspects of vocabulary knowl-edge in depth – though obviously important – does not reveal the process of how an individual word is developed for use. Henriksen and Haastrup (1998: 77) suggested that it is an ‘ambitious’ goal in the research of second language vocabulary acquisition to explore what it takes for a word to develop from receptive to productive use. This is in part because knowledge of second language vocabulary acquisition is built on fragmentary studies (Nation, in an interview by Schmitt 1995). In order to understand vocabulary growth from receptive to productive use, a broader approach in addition to considering depth and size is needed for measurement.

3. Vocabulary as a multidimensional construct

Taking the construct of vocabulary knowledge development in terms of size and depth as a departure point, Henriksen (1999) viewed vo-cabulary knowledge development as a multidimensional continuum, comprising: (i) a partial-to-precise knowledge dimension where levels of knowledge are operationalized as degrees of understanding; (ii) a depth-of-knowledge dimension which reveals the multi-aspect nature of word knowledge, and extends to a word’s syntagmatic and para-digmatic relations with other words; and (iii) a receptive-productive dimension which refers to the mastery levels of vocabulary knowledge reflected in the learners’ comprehension and productive ability. The first two dimensions are related to comprehension of word knowledge while the third dimension is associated with the ability to access and use a word.

The partial-precise dimension indicates that knowledge moves from recognition to vague understanding of meaning and later to the mastery of precise comprehension. This represents a continuum of growth in meaning (Waring 2002). The better the word meaning is known, the further the development is along the partial-to-precise


dimension. The development along the continuum of the partial-precise dimension starts with identifying the certain combination of letters or sounds that could be used to refer to objects or abstract con-cepts. Clark (1993) described this process as mapping written or pho-nological form to meaning. The recognition of the existence of the word in a language is considered as the first step in vocabulary acqui-sition. This process turns potential vocabulary into real vocabulary. The acquisition progresses with different levels of partial knowledge (Brown 1994). The mapping between form and meaning continues to strengthen as the understanding of meaning gradually changes or deepens after the word is encountered more and more in different con-texts (Henriksen 1999).

The depth dimension in Henriksen’s model is viewed in line with the network building approach as the process of ‘creating both extensional and intensional relations’ (Henriksen 1999: 312). The extensional relations refer to the links between the concept of the word and its referent. For example, the concept of cup is a small con-tainer used for drinking, and its referent is the physical item of the small container. The intensional relations refer to paradigmatic (an-tonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and gradation) and syntagmatic rela-tions (collocational restrictions). The results from measurements of network building in lexical knowledge reveal a general state of the learners’ vocabulary knowledge rather than showing a detailed profile of how much each word is known (Meara 2009).

The advantage of viewing depth of knowledge as a network building rather than the sum of many aspects is that it provides an overview of a learner’s state of vocabulary knowledge at a certain point of time (Read 2004). The network building view of depth re-flects the degree of mastery of vocabulary as a whole property in the learner’s mind. Meara (1996 cited in Read 2004: 217-218) said that ‘it misses the wood for the trees’ when the depth measurement targets only the general state of a learner’s vocabulary knowledge rather than how well the word is known. In order to understand how well a word is mastered, aspects of words need to be explored.

There are overlaps between the network building and multi-aspect word knowledge approaches when they are examined at a mi-cro-level. Being able to construct the links between words, language

28 Hua Zhong

learners should have mastered the aspects of knowledge at an individ-ual word level. For example, in order to produce the link between contract and agreement, a learner has to firstly understand the mean-ing of both words, secondly know their grammatical function as nouns, and thirdly, in the association task, know their constraints of use. To some extent, the concept of network building can be viewed as a comprehensive understanding of multiple aspects of vocabulary knowledge.

Further developed from Henriksen’s model, the depth dimen-sion can be conceptualized as the ability or mastery of different as-pects of vocabulary knowledge, in line with the multi-aspect word knowledge approach. In order to distinguish the categories of aspects in the depth dimension from Nation’s (2001) form, meaning and use, new categories of form, semantic association and pragmatic factors are introduced to the discussion in this chapter. Form includes ortho-graphic, phonological and morphological aspects. Semantic associa-tion refers to antonym, synonym, hyponymy and gradation. Pragmatic factors refer to collocational restrictions, register and frequency.

The third dimension of vocabulary knowledge is the receptive-productive dichotomy. Read (2000) points out that not all researchers define the receptive-productive dichotomy in the same way. This has created problems when it comes to comparisons between these two kinds of knowledge. For example, Waring (1997) regards the ability to provide a specific first language (L1) translation of the second lan-guage (L2) word as receptive knowledge, and the ability to provide a specific L2 equivalent for an L1 word as productive knowledge. This concept is further developed by Laufer et al. (2004) who describe receptive knowledge as retrieval of the word’s form, and productive knowledge as retrieval of the word’s meaning.

In Webb’s (2008) study, receptive vocabulary knowledge is de-scribed as the ability to recognize the form of a word and to define or find a synonym for it, while productive vocabulary knowledge is seen as the ability to recall the form and meaning of a foreign language word. Nation (1990) said that receptive vocabulary use essentially involves perceiving the word form while listening or reading and re-trieving its meaning, and productive vocabulary use is the ability to retrieve and produce the appropriate spoken or written form of a word


in expressing a meaning by speaking or writing. These definitions restrict the concept of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to the form and meaning aspects.

Nation (2001) suggested that receptive and productive knowl-edge of a word should cover all aspects of what is involved in know-ing a word. For example, knowing how a word sounds is the receptive dimension of spoken form and knowing how the word is pronounced is the productive dimension of spoken form. In other words, each of the aspects in the partial-precise and depth dimensions can be mas-tered at a receptive or productive level for use. Therefore, adapting Nation’s (1990) definition of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, receptive vocabulary knowledge can be conceptualized as the comprehension ability in reading and listening, and productive vocabulary knowledge can be conceptualized as the ability to apply the word appropriately to fit into a context in writing and speaking.

Laufer (1998) subdivided productive vocabulary knowledge into controlled productive and free productive, thus enriching the components of vocabulary knowledge in the receptive-productive dimension (Laufer/Paribakht’s 1998 study also adopted the same sub-division of productive knowledge). Controlled productive knowledge indicates the degree of producing the words when a cue is given, as is the case of completing the word bicycle in ‘He was riding a bic_______’ (Laufer/Nation 1999: 46). Free productive knowledge refers to the spontaneous use of a word without any specific prompts, as is the case of free composition.

4. Implications for research on productive vocabulary development

From the conceptual framework of three-dimensional vocabulary knowledge, it can be concluded that the partial-precise and depth di-mensions are the components of comprehension of vocabulary knowl-edge. Comprehension enables the learner to use a word appropriately

30 Hua Zhong

in a context which is a comprehensive ability that can be subdivided into the mastery of partial-precise and depth dimensions when ob-served at a micro level. The partial-precise and depth dimensions de-scribe the internal competence of a learner in vocabulary understand-ing, while the receptive-productive dimension is the performance of applying the comprehension of a word. Exploring the developmental changes associated with the partial-precise and depth dimensions may provide an understanding of the vocabulary knowledge growth pattern in the receptive-productive dimension.

Based on the preceding literature review of a multi-dimensional construct of vocabulary knowledge, the hypothesized relations among the dimensions are represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Hypothesized relations among three dimensions of vocabulary knowledge. Building on this hypothesized relations model of multi-dimensional vocabulary knowledge, the development from receptive to productive vocabulary knowledge can be explored by looking at the direct rela-tionship from comprehension to use (two arrows pointing from par-tial-precise and depth dimensions to productive knowledge) and the intermediate relationship of partial-precise and depth dimensions to productive vocabulary knowledge via receptive knowledge (two ar-

Comprehension Use

Partial-precise dimension

Depth dimension

Receptiveknowledge

Productive knowledge

Receptive-productive dimension


rows from partial-precise and depth dimensions to receptive knowl-edge and the arrow from receptive knowledge to productive knowl-edge) and how these relationships change over time.

To examine the changes of relationships over time, a longitudi-nal research design is needed. It is more valid to explore the changes by tracking one group of learners over time than to compare the dif-ferences between two groups of learners whose proficiency is at dif-ferent levels. Schmitt’s (1998) longitudinal study tracked the acquisi-tion of eleven words over one academic year among three university students (Lithuanian, Chinese, Indian). Four aspects of vocabulary knowledge were measured: spelling, associations, grammatical infor-mation and meaning. Interviews with the same procedure and ques-tions were conducted with the three university participants at the be-ginning, in the middle and at the end of the academic year.

Findings indicate that participants did not experience difficulty in spelling because a word could be spelt correctly based on the pro-nunciation without acquiring the meaning. 72% of the target words remained stable in the knowledge of meaning senses while the number of target words with improvement in meaning sense was 2.5 times more than the number showing deterioration in meaning. The deterio-ration happened more often in the shift from receptive knowledge to unknown status than in the shift from productive knowledge to recep-tive or unknown status. Association knowledge was seen to proceed to more native-like levels after a year of study.

The study also demonstrated that some of the knowledge as-pects were interrelated. However, to date, we do not have a clear model of this development in different aspects of vocabulary knowl-edge. It is of research interest to look at vocabulary development from a multi-dimensional perspective to see how these dimensions are re-lated to each other (Henriksen 1999). Zareva (2005) set out to test a three dimensional model of vocabulary knowledge by using a revised Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (Wesche/Paribakht 1996: 551), as fol-lows:

1) I have never seen this word before. 2) I have seen this word before but I don’t remember what it means. 3) I think this word means _______. (synonym, translation, or brief explanation)

32 Hua Zhong

4) I know that this word means _______. (synonym, translation, or brief ex-planation)

5) I associate this word with ______, ______, ______.

73 target words were selected from a dictionary and showed a similar percentage of a spread across different vocabulary frequency levels. Both native and non-native speakers with intermediate to advanced levels of English proficiency participated in the study. Students’ re-sponses were coded with different methods and were transferred to six scores representing: a) students’ actual vocabulary knowledge, b) self-reported vocabulary knowledge, c) vocabulary size, d) vocabulary frequency effect, e) native-like commonality of associations, and f) number of associations.

Results from regression analysis show a statistically significant relationship between students’ actual vocabulary knowledge and the other five aspects of vocabulary knowledge. A particularly strong predictive power was found in self-reported vocabulary knowledge to the actual vocabulary knowledge. Overall, the best predictors of actual vocabulary knowledge among all the aspects were self-reported vo-cabulary knowledge and vocabulary size.

Zareva’s (2005) study relies on a method of transferring the test results into scores for different aspects. Assigning one to four points according to participant responses to levels 1 to 4 is treated as self-reported vocabulary knowledge, whereas awarding one to four points according to participants’ correct responses to levels 1 to 4 is treated as actual vocabulary knowledge. These two scores exhibit high simi-larity. The regression analysis which is based on correlation analysis (Keith 2005) has high probability of generating biased statistic results. Therefore, when it comes to measuring the dimensions so as to verify the hypothesized relations, a multi-task approach is seen as valuable. Figure 2 is a suggested multi-task approach that operationalizes the hypothesized relations shown in Figure 1.

Receptive knowledge, defined as comprehension, is a mental ac-tivity that cannot be measured directly. However, it can be verified by production in the L1 or receptive L2 tasks such as selection and judge-ment. This verification should be done for each aspect. Defining pro-ductive vocabulary as comprehensive ability to use a word in context


enables the observation of the mastery of different aspects in the partial-precise and depth dimensions from a single spoken or written task. Figure 2. Operationalized relations between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge under a three-dimensional framework.

5. Assessing vocabulary knowledge

5.1. Partial-to-precise dimension

Waring (2002) proposed that an incremental process of vocabulary development can be transferred into scales of vocabulary knowledge1. One of the most widely known scale checklists is the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Wesche/Paribakht 1996: 30), as follows: 1 See section ‘Continua and vocabulary assessment’ in Waring (2002) from

<www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/papers/scales.htm>.

Productive vocabulary knowledge

meaning form semantic association

pragmatic factors

Controlled productive knowledge

Free productive knowledge

Receptive vocabulary knowledge

Partial-precise dimension

Depth dimension

34 Hua Zhong

I. I don’t remember having seen this word before. II. I have seen this word before, but I don’t know what it means. III. I have seen this word before, and I think it means _________. (syno-

nym or translation) IV. I know this word. It means _________. (synonym or translation) V. I can use this word in a sentence: ______________________. (If you

do this section, please also do Section IV.)

The significance of VKS is its self-reporting feature which excludes the learners’ test skill of guessing in the performance. It is claimed to better reflect the real ability a learner has than using several tasks to capture the degrees of knowledge because the difference in scores from several tasks may result from the difficulty difference among tasks (Waring 2002).

Criticism of VKS lies in its linearity (Waring 2000, 2002). The knowledge required in VKS is multi-faceted. In Level III, learners are asked to recognize the word (‘I have seen this word before’) and retrieve its meaning (‘I think it means_________.’). However, the scoring is linear because stages are arranged in sequence and each is assigned one score according to how much it reflects the learner’s overall word knowledge. A total score from all five levels indicates an acquisition level of the word. However, this approach to scoring does not distinguish between learners who achieve the same score but complete different levels. The data collected from the VKS is nominal rather than ordinal.

Linearity could never be achieved when VKS is used to meas-ure the development of vocabulary knowledge as a whole because of the complex nature of multiple dimensions of vocabulary knowledge. However, it is useful when applied to measure a single dimension of the vocabulary knowledge continuum, particularly the partial-precise dimension of meaning. A continuum view of vocabulary development along the partial to precise dimension assumes that knowledge moves from less to full, which suggests the following arrangement (Waring 2002: 9):

a) I do not know this word. b) I know a little of the word meaning. c) I know this word meaning quite well. d) I know this word meaning very well.


The linearity lies in how well the meaning is known. The four stages are viewed as unknown (a), partially unknown (b and c) and known or well-known (d). The unknown stage is what Palmberg (1987) called potential vocabulary – words learners do not know at all. The descrip-tion for this stage could be ‘I don’t remember I have seen or heard of this word before.’ The known stage indicates mastery of word mean-ing. Learners at this stage know the meaning receptively and this can be verified by asking them to produce a translation in L1 for the words. Therefore, this stage can be described as:

� I know this word, and it means _________________. (translation) (adapted from De la Fuente 2002: 112)

� I know this word well enough to give its definition: _______________. (trans-lation or explanation in L1) (adapted from D’Anna et al. 1991: 117)

Partial knowledge is the intermediate stage between an unknown and a well-known word. The intermediate stage includes recognition of ex-istence (Dale 1965; Shore/Durso 1990) and rough characterization or vagueness of word meaning (Bruton 2007; Dale 1965; Henriksen 1999; Smith 1987; Wesche/Paribakht 1996). Recognition of existence – in other words the acknowledgement of the formal features – does not indicate the knowledge of word meaning (Henriksen 1999). It can be described as ‘I have seen or heard of this word before, but I don’t know what it means’ (Wesche/Paribakht 1996: 30). It is a scale that cannot be verified. Learners could mistake the target words for other words they have seen but don’t know the meaning of. This stage is at a higher level than ‘unknown’ and at a lower level than ‘having a rough idea of what the word means’.

In the literature, there are two major methods to assess partial word knowledge. One method is using a checklist instrument and a statement to capture the learners’ uncertainty in mastery of the mean-ing comprehension, such as ‘I think it means _______’ (De la Fuente 2002: 223; Wesche/Paribakht 1996: 30) or ‘I know its meaning a little, and what I know is _________’ (adapted from Waring 20022). The

2 See section ‘Continua and vocabulary assessment’ in Waring (2002) from

<www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/papers/scales.htm>.

36 Hua Zhong

other method, usually used with a multiple choice instrument, is to adopt a polytomous scoring method, giving half a point to answers that fall somewhere between right and wrong (Schwanenflugel/ Stahl/McFalls 1997; Smith 1987). Schwanenflugel et al. (1997: 7) considered ‘a domain-related but essentially incorrect definition or a checked word’ as a correct response when measuring the comprehen-sion of meaning of the target word.

The polytomous scoring method recognizes a stage at which learners start to sort out the relations among words by clarifying the fine shades of the target word. However, there is no proof which stage is higher within the range of partial understanding. Therefore, the stage could be described as ‘I recognize this word, and it has some-thing to do with ________’ (adapted from Dale 1965: 898). The ad-vantage of this statement is its non-confinement to the sequence of acquisition stages (Smith 1987). It opens up the opportunity to explore whether there are different stages in partial understanding. The two modified versions of unidimensional vocabulary knowledge scale in meaning are suggested as follows:

Version A I. I don’t remember I have seen or heard of this word before. II. I have seen or heard of this word before, but I don’t know what it

means. III. I recognize this word, it has something to do with __________. IV. I know this word. It means _________. (translation)

Version B

I. I don’t remember I have seen or heard of this word before. II. I have seen or heard of this word before, but I don’t know what it

means. III. I have seen or heard this word before, and know its meaning a little.

What I know about it is ____________________. IV. I know this word well enough to give its definition: _________ (trans-

lation or explanation in L1)


5.2. Depth dimension

The depth dimension indicates a comprehensive word model which includes three categories of knowledge aspects listed as follows:

� form – orthographic, phonological and morphological aspects � semantic association – antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and gradation � pragmatic factors – collocation restrictions, register and frequency

Schmitt (1995) pointed out that the form and meaning aspects are apparently acquired earlier and used more than the other aspects in the process of learning. When the words are encountered repeatedly in different contexts, collocational and register aspects will be learned. Though acquired at a later stage, association is an indicator of vocabu-lary retainment (Zareva 2007). It facilitates the appropriate use of words in context by enabling learners to compare the similarity and difference among words (�stifci 2010). Collocational knowledge in-creases fluency and makes the language more understandable as well as native-like (Fan 2008). Hoey (2005) proposed that grammar is the outcome of the systematic structure of commonly co-occurring words. There is a significant contribution of form, semantic association and collocation to the productive and creative use of vocabulary. Register and frequency in the depth dimension are indicators of an advanced level of vocabulary use in the context, which is closely related to the culture of the target language.

Receptive tests measuring meaning, form, semantic association and collocation, as well as productive tests of morphological aspects will now be reviewed. The frequency aspect will be briefly introduced in conjunction with form and meaning. To the knowledge of the au-thor, there is no vocabulary test assessing the register use of a word. Tests of productive vocabulary knowledge will also be examined.

5.2.1. Form

Form is often measured in association with meaning and vocabulary size, such as the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) (Nation 1983; Schmitt et al. 2001), and the Yes/No test (Meara/Buxton 1987; Meara/Milton

38 Hua Zhong

2005). Both of the tests target the receptive ability of recognizing the form of the word.

The VLT is a diagnostic vocabulary test for use by teachers (Na-tion 1983, 1990). It provides an estimate of vocabulary knowledge in meaning, form and frequency by asking test takers to match meanings to the target words at four frequency levels as well as at an academic vocabulary level. This test provides teachers and curriculum designers with information of whether a student is likely to reach the vocabulary threshold to cope with certain language tasks (Schmitt et al. 2001). The four frequency levels consist of the 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 most frequently used words and the academic section samples words from Campion and Elley (1971). Each level contains 18 items.

Read (1988) did some initial validation on the test and found that it was reliable enough to be adopted in other research studies (e.g. Laufer/Paribakht 1998; Schmitt/Meara 1997). Because of the diffi-culty in extrapolating a learner’s vocabulary size beyond a relatively small sample from a pool of several thousand words, this test is more effective at low frequency levels than higher frequency levels (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000).

Two further tests have been developed from this test. One is a new version of the VLT (Schmitt et al. 2001) which includes 30 items at each level and an academic section which samples words from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000). Validation studies have produced reliability figures above .90 (Schmitt et al. 2001). The sec-ond test is the Controlled Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (CPVLT) (Laufer/Nation 1999) which will be discussed in the produc-tive vocabulary tests review.

The first Yes/No test (Meara/Buxton 1987) requires learners to report whether they know the target words by ticking ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. The words for measurement include both real words and pseudo-words. This allows adjustment to the scores for test-takers responding ‘Yes’ to pseudo-words. This simple format makes it possible to ad-minister on computer, such as orthographic tests of X-Lex (Meara/ Milton 2005) and Y_Lex (Meara/Miralpeix 2006), and the phonologi-cal test of Aural_Lex (Milton/Hopkins 2005). The Yes/No test cap-tures multiple degrees of vocabulary knowledge. A response of ‘Yes’ may indicate either recognition of the form or knowing the meaning


very well, or even the ability to use the words (Read 2007). In order to capture only orthographic knowledge, Webb (2005, 2009) designed a receptive orthography task that requires learners to choose the cor-rectly spelled target words from three distractors. The distractors are created to resemble the target words both phonetically and ortho-graphically. An example of the receptive version is as follows: (a) dirrect (b) diret (c) direct (d) derict

5.2.2. Morphological aspect

The morphological aspect, also referred to as grammatical knowledge (Schmitt/Meara 1997) or derivatives, is important to the productive use of a word in context. It is closely related to the knowledge of word families, which is considered a critical aspect of knowing a word (Nation 2001; Schmitt/Meara 1997). The receptive use of vocabulary in reading and listening largely depends on the meaning and form aspects. Knowing the basic form or the frequently used word classes (noun or verb) of a word will facilitate understanding of the meaning of its ad-verb or adjective. Therefore, knowing one word in a family receptively facilitates the learning of other members (Schmitt/Zimmerman 2002).

However, the productive use of a word requires the mastery of productive morphological knowledge. When it comes to writing or speaking, learners need to be able to choose the appropriate word classes or even grammatical forms to fit the context. Therefore, it is necessary to measure this aspect productively rather than receptively. The instrument Schmitt and Zimmerman (2002: 169) used is a sen-tence completion task where context is provided for the prompt word, as in the following:

ASSUME Noun He made an ____________ that she likes meat. Verb He can _____________ that she likes meat. Adjective He had an ____________ idea that she likes meat. Adverb He decided _____________ that she likes meat.

Test takers are required to produce the appropriate derivative form of the prompt word in each sentence and put a cross when the elicited

40 Hua Zhong

derivative form does not exist. The test is intended to assess the con-textualized use of words. It measures the receptive ability of other words, because learners need to know them in order to understand the context. It presents a higher requirement on learners’ breadth of vo-cabulary knowledge than a decontextualized task would. Ishii and Schmitt (2009: 10) published another simple and decontextualized task to measure the morphological aspect, as follows:

Target word Noun Verb Adjective stimulate stimulation stimulate stimulating educate

The task was developed and validated by Ishii (2005) among a group of Japanese undergraduate students whose proficiency level is inter-mediate. The test was originally developed with all four word classes (noun, verb, adjective and adverb) for measurement, but the adverb column was later deleted because of its low reliability. The researchers also found that the completion of adverbs is largely associated with knowledge of adjectival forms. Learners who could write the correct form of the adjective tended to produce its adverb form correctly. The reliability of the test without the adverb column was .94 (Ishii 2005).

5.2.3. Semantic association

The Word Association Test (WAT) by Read (1995, 1998) captures the knowledge of both semantic association and collocational aspects in pragmatic factors. The test requires learners to choose four out of eight words that associate with the given word. The eight associates are in two groups, one group reflecting semantic association of the target word and the other group testing knowledge of frequent collo-cates. Validation of the Word Association Test produced a high reli-ability of .93 (Read 1998). An example3 is as follows: BEAUTIFUL

enjoyable expensive free loud education face music weather

3 The example is from Read’s (1998) web-based test <www.lextutor.ca/tests/

associates>).


Schoonen and Verhallen (2008) further revised the word association test by reducing word associate options from eight to six for young Dutch learners of English (9-12 years old). The findings indicate a concurrent correlation with a definition test at .82, and Cronbach’s Alpha ranges from .75 to .83 on the basis of an item reliability test. The study concluded that the 6-option word association test is valid and reliable for use among young learners.

Schmitt et al. (2011) further validated the two versions of the word association test – 8-option (Read 1998) and 6-option (Schoonen/ Verhallen 2008). Despite the fact that both versions of the test are vulnerable to guessing, the word association test provides a good measure of the depth construct 56% (8-option) and 64% (6-option). The probability of guessing could be controlled by giving special care to the selection of the associates and distractors.

5.2.4. Collocational aspect in pragmatic factors

The validated version of Read’s WAT (1995, 1998) focuses on the collocations of adjective + noun, because the selected target words are all adjectives. However, it is possible to extend this format of multiple choices to other word classes. It is argued that this multiple choice format may not present the collocation as a whole (Revier 2009), be-cause the collocates can be placed before or after the target word when WAT is extended to other word classes. An example is shown below: COMFORT

Synonym Collocation favor relief help tell large great fetch offer

The correct collocations – ‘great comfort’ and ‘offer comfort’ – are not presented in the right word order as in use in this multiple choice format. When the target word is a verb, it is inevitable that the article is omitted between the target word and the collocates (most likely will be a noun). Taking these points into consideration, Revier (2009) con-structed the CONTRIX (constituent matrix) which examines the whole collocations in the format of verb + (det) + noun. An example taken from Gyllstad (2009: 129) is:

42 Hua Zhong

The quickest way to win a friend’s trust is to show that you are able to ....

tell a/an joke take the secret keep — truth

The validation was carried out among a group of 56 Danish EFL stu-dents from Year 10 to 1st year university students. Results show mod-erately high reliability of .89 (Revier 2009) and evidence for accept-able criterion prediction validity (Anastasi/Urbina 1997) among stu-dents with different proficiency. Revier (2009) claims that the advan-tage of this format is that the presentation is of a whole collocation and the correct word order as well as that the collocations are exam-ined in a meaningful context. It is argued that measuring vocabulary in a context is more valid than decontextualized measurement, because it is the authentic way of using the words in communication (Gyllstad 2009; Laufer et al. 2004). However, whenever linguistic context is provided in the task, recognition and recall of the other words in the context are involved, which involves constructs seen as less relevant to measuring target word knowledge (Messick 1995).

There are two decontextualized collocation measurement tools developed by Gyllstad (2009). COLLEX (collocating lexis) is a multi-ple choice test where three collocations are presented, and test takers need to select the one that they think is the most frequently used. One point is given when a correct selection is made. The other called COLLMATCH (collocation matching) is in a Yes/No format where test takers need to decide whether the presented sequence of words is a collocation or the most frequently occurring combination of words. Points are awarded for correct recognition of collocations and correct rejection of frequently used word combinations.

These two formats of collocation tests, though easy to construct and administer, assess the recognition ability of the collocation. They may function well as a self-assessment instrument for English learn-ers. However, they may not provide sufficient information for teachers or researchers when the purpose is to diagnose or explore learners’ collocational knowledge, because, as with the form and meaning Yes/No tests, neither COLLEX nor COLLMATCH reveals the de-grees of knowing.


5.3. Productive vocabulary knowledge

The Controlled Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer/Nation 1999) developed from the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation 1983, 1990) prompts test-takers to produce predetermined target words by supplying a sentence context, a definition and the beginning letters of the target word. The test presents 18 items at five levels: 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, University Word List (Xue/Nation 1984) and 10,000 word level. Completing the test requires the knowledge of meaning, form, morphological aspect, and collocations of the target word. In addition, reading comprehension of the context is required in gaining the clues to complete the task.

Measuring free productive vocabulary usually requires learners to produce target words in context without a prompt. The most commonly used is the Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer/Nation 1995). It requires learners to compose a short essay based around a prompt/topic. There-fore the test is topic-restricted (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000). Learners tend to avoid using words they know but are not able to master fully.

In addition to this, free productive vocabulary tests require a long word count to generate more than a handful of infrequent words (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000). Laufer and Nation (1995) reported that a stable estimate on a learner’s vocabulary size requires two 300-word essays from each learner. Producing essays of such length is a time-consuming and demanding task for learners of low language profi-ciency. Taking this into consideration, Meara and Fitzpatrick (2000) designed Lex30. Lex30 contains word association tasks which provide a stimulus word and require test takers to write as many responses to that stimulus as they can. Different from the word association tasks introduced earlier in this chapter, Lex30 does not have any criteria of whether the responses are indeed related to the stimulus. Thus the sum of all the responses resembles a collection of words as in an essay.

These responses, excluding the stimulus words, are lemmatized according to the criteria of affixes described in Bauer and Nation (1993). Both of these tests count the number of frequent and infre-quent words and calculate the percentage of these two groups of words. The higher the infrequent words’ percentage counts, the larger

44 Hua Zhong

the size of productive vocabulary a test taker is estimated to have (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000).

Alternatively, sentence writing as required in Level V in VKS can be used to capture free productive knowledge. However, revision of this test is needed to improve the validity. It is proposed to write two to three sentences, one of which should contain the prompt word in any word class. Abandoning the restriction of using the exact form of the given prompt words may simulate a natural use of language in communication.

Writing more than one sentence may provide a rich context to enable learners to demonstrate their ability to use the words in a con-text. It may also be useful to minimise the scope for students produc-ing neutral sentences that do not reflect their command of the word. A neutral sentence with ‘beautiful’ would be ‘She is beautiful’. The sen-tence could be produced without knowing the meaning of ‘beautiful’ as long as the participant knows that adjectives include words ending in ‘-ful’. Sentence writing could demonstrate the learners’ productive vocabulary knowledge in different aspects if an analytical scoring approach is applied. Table 1 summarizes the aspects captured by dif-ferent vocabulary assessment tools.


Table 1. Vocabulary knowledge tests and their corresponding construct.

Mea

ning

Orth

ogra

phic

fo

rm

Phon

etic

form

Mor

phol

ogic

al

aspe

ct

Sem

antic

as

soci

atio

n

Col

loca

tion

Freq

uenc

y

Reg

iste

r

Rea

ding

co

mpr

ehen

sion

Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (Wesche/Paribakht 1996)

R&P R&P P P

Two versions of revised unidimensional VKS (adapted from D’Anna et al. 1991; Dale 1965; Waring 2002; Wesche/ Paribakht 1996)

R R

Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation 1983; Schmitt etal. 2001)

R R R

X_Lex (Meara/Milton 2005) R

Y_Lex (Meara/Miralpeix 2006) R

Aural_Lex (Mil-ton/Hopkins 2005) R

Form recognition (Webb 2005, 2009) R

Contextualized morpho-logical aspect test (Schmitt/ Zimmerman 2002)

P P P Y

Decontextualized morpho-logical aspect test (Ishii/ Schmitt 2009)

P P

Word Association Test (8-option by Read 1995, 1998; 6-option by Schoonen/ Verhallen 2008)

R R R R

CONTRIX (Revier 2009) R R R Y COLLEX (Gyllstad 2009) R R R

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Table 1.(cont.)

R=receptive vocabulary knowledge; P= productive vocabulary knowledge; Y=yes

6. Implications for classroom vocabulary teaching and assessment

This chapter has further developed a multi-dimensional construct of vocabulary knowledge based on Henriksen’s (1999) model. It has emphasized the complex mechanism of vocabulary knowledge in both receptive and productive use. When it comes to teaching and learning, teachers should go beyond meaning and form, to also explore how well their learners use a word in writing and speaking.

Research into the effectiveness of teaching and learning tasks may give some hints to teachers on how to improve the learners’ re-ceptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. It is found that recep-tive learning contributes more to receptive knowledge, whereas pro-

Mea

ning

Orth

ogra

phic

fo

rm

Phon

etic

form

Mor

phol

ogic

al

aspe

ct

Sem

antic

as

soci

atio

n

Col

loca

tion

Freq

uenc

y

Reg

iste

r

Rea

ding

co

mpr

ehen

sion

COLLMATCH (Gyllstad 2009) R R R

VLT controlled productive version (Laufer/Nation 1999)

P P P R Y

Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer/Nation 1995) P P P P P

Lex30 (Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000) P P P

Sentence writing (adapted from Wesche/Paribakht 1996)

P P P P P


ductive learning more likely leads to increase in productive knowl-edge (Griffin/Harley 1996; Waring 1997).

Webb (2005) designed a reading task (three glossed sentences) and a writing task (sentence production) for two experiments among a group of 66 Japanese university students. The first experiment of comparing the receptive and productive tasks used within the same length of time suggested that receptive learning tasks may contribute not only to developing receptive knowledge but also lead to signifi-cantly greater increase in productive knowledge. His second experi-ment investigated the effectiveness of these tasks when different time lengths were allocated. Results showed that productive learning out-performed receptive learning in promoting productive vocabulary knowledge.

In Webb’s (2009) later study, the effectiveness of receptive and productive word pair tasks was compared among a group of 62 Japa-nese university students. The receptive task required learners to look at the target English words and recall their meaning in the L1, while the productive task presented the target words in the L1 and required learners to recall the English words. The results showed that receptive learning led to larger gains in receptive meaning while productive learning led to larger gains in both receptive and productive knowl-edge.

In practice, both receptive and productive tasks should be used for teaching vocabulary. However, teachers could use receptive vo-cabulary learning tasks in the classroom when time is limited, while productive vocabulary tasks can be a better choice than receptive tasks for home assignments because they involve more aspects of vocabu-lary knowledge. In addition to teaching and learning tasks, personal factors like needs and motivation also influence the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge. Laufer (1991) investigated the development of written expression among a group of L2 university students and found that under the same comprehensible input condition, those students who entered the university below the average language competence progressed better than those above average. It suggested that the ad-vanced learners who can cope with university study and assignment tasks with their existing proficiency level were less motivated to fur-ther their productive vocabulary knowledge than those who struggled

48 Hua Zhong

with their university tasks. The need to learn or to catch up with peers becomes one of the main motivations to improve vocabulary knowl-edge.

Research suggests that motivation influences a learner’s self-regulating capacity which directly influences the involvement in vo-cabulary learning (Tseng/Schmitt 2008). In other words, learners with higher motivation tend to have stronger control over such personal factors in vocabulary learning as commitment, metacognition and emotion. The stronger capacity of controls over these personal factors would lead to better strategic vocabulary learning. Therefore, from a teacher’s perspective, it would be a good idea to offer incentives to learners to make improvements in vocabulary study so as to motivate learners in their future vocabulary learning. It is also important to let students understand that vocabulary development is a slow process and students should not be disappointed should they not notice any immediate improvement in their vocabulary use.

In vocabulary assessment, a multi-task approach may be re-quired for diagnostic purposes to detect which aspects of word knowl-edge require further development. Depending on the needs for as-sessment and the time constraints of the classroom instruction, differ-ent tasks can be chosen. For example, the revised scale checklist for measuring meaning could be a useful instrument for students to do self-assessment after the initial introduction of new words.

As word knowledge develops further, the Word Association Task could be used to detect whether students have mastered the fine shades of a word’s meaning that enable them to distinguish among synonyms, as well as whether they have acquired understanding of the collocational restrictions of the target words. In a time-restricted situa-tion, as in class time, the controlled productive vocabulary test may be suitable for assessing learners’ productive vocabulary knowledge. Free productive tasks can be used when time permits as they are effec-tive in demonstrating learners’ weaknesses of using words produc-tively in context.


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CHEN-CHUN LIN

The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts

1. Introduction

Word knowledge plays an essential role in language acquisition, and second language (L2) learners need to acquire a substantial vocabulary in order to achieve competency in all L2 skills (Hinkel 2006). In this context, there has been increasing interest in the nature of word knowledge and its learning process in the past decades.

L2 vocabulary studies have focused on lexical acquisition in different learning conditions, examining how learners acquire lexical knowledge receptively (see Hill/Laufer 2003; Jenkins/Stein/Wysocki 1984; Min 2008; Nagy/Anderson/Herman 1987; Rott 2007; Webb 2005; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001), how they acquire lexical knowledge productively (Lee 2003; Lee/Muncie 2006; Snellings/van Gelderen/de Glopper 2004), the relationship between L2 learners’ vocabulary size and their lexical competence (Koda 1989; Laufer 1997; Meara 1996; Qian 1999; Ward 2009), and how well a learner knows a given word and how well the lexical items are organized into the learner’s mental lexicon system (see Stæhr 2009).

Limited attention has been given to the nature of word knowl-edge, particularly the various dimensions of word properties that af-fect word learnability, in order to indicate ‘the ease or difficulty with which a particular word can be acquired’ (Bogaards/Laufer 2004: X). This chapter seeks to raise awareness of the features of a word’s ‘writ-ten form’ – orthography, morphology, and word length – that impact on L2 word learnability.

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2. Word learnability

From a linguistic point of view, learning a new word involves learning its form (spoken and written), structure (the free root morpheme and the derivations of the word and its inflections), syntactic patterns of the word in a sentence, meaning, lexical relations of the word with other words, and common collocations (Laufer 1997). In other words, knowing a word consists of knowing: (1) word form – pronunciation, spelling and part of speech; (2) word meaning – the knowledge of the connection between form and meaning, conceptual content and word associations; and (3) word function – the ability to use the word in the appropriate contexts (Nation 2001).

Knowing a word form requires the concept of knowing a word family. A word family comprises a base word with its inflections and derivations that can be recognized by a learner without having extra effort to learn each form separately. For example, listen, listens, lis-tened, and listening are grouped into one word family (Bauer/Nation 1993). Knowing one member of a word family, it is suggested, may facilitate the recognition of other members of the family. However, studies indicate that L2 learners face difficulty with processing the written form of words (Bensoussan/Laufer 1984; Grainger/Dijkstra 1992; Laufer 1988).

In naturalistic learning practices, lexical learning requires fre-quent exposure to the words to be learned (Ellis/Beaton 1993), going beyond a single encounter of a word which is likely to be insufficient for acquiring full word knowledge (Hulstijn 2002). In addition, words are not likely to be learned linearly from one frequency level to the next; and high-frequency words that are learned could still be forgot-ten over time if not used or met (Schmitt/Meara 1997). Moreover, one word may be more difficult to learn than another even if the two words have the same frequency of occurrence in the language (Laufer 1990, 1997; Swan 1997). In such cases, learners may obtain partial knowledge of some words, with a focus mainly on parts of word form (Barcroft/Rott 2010).

The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts 59

What are the factors that shape the ease or difficulty of learning a word and determine if a word is likely to be learned partially or fully? The multifaceted word features can be assumed to impact on the possibility of words being problematic to learn, including a word’s pronounceability, orthography, length, morphology, synformy (simi-larity of lexical forms), grammar (part of speech), and semantic fea-tures (Laufer 1997: 142-152). Understanding the nature of word knowledge (i.e. the effect of word properties on learnability) is thus of interest in the field of second language vocabulary research and sec-ond language teaching. Previous studies of L2 lexical learning have identified factors that may affect the ease or difficulty of learning a new word.

Ellis and Beaton (1993) investigated the psycholinguistic factors that affect the ease of learning foreign language (German) vocabulary. Word length, phonotactic regularity, and part of speech were reported as properties that affected L2 word learnability. Their results suggested that part of speech and concept imageability are two critical factors that may determine a word’s learnability, and further suggested that nouns are the easiest to learn because they can be highly imageable.

The study also indicated that foreign words can be learned ef-fortlessly if their phonological and orthographic patterns are similar to the learners’ first language. In short, if the word is shorter, highly im-ageable, acoustically familiar, easily pronounceable, and phonotacti-cally regular, we may assume this L2 word can be learned easily based on Ellis and Beaton’s findings.

Other L2 vocabulary studies have shown that grammatical as-pects such as word class and derivational morphology are problematic features in learning (see Alderson/Clapham/Steel 1997; Schmitt/Zim-merman 2002). Schmitt and Meara (1997) examined how knowledge of word associations and grammatical suffix change over one aca-demic year with 95 Japanese secondary and postsecondary students. They found that the students had difficulties in producing acceptable suffixes for the verbs, particularly the derivative suffixes.

In terms of semantic features, de Groot and Keijzer (2000) looked at foreign language vocabulary learning and forgetting with experienced Dutch learners. They found that concrete words and cog-nates were easier to learn but not easier to be forgotten than abstract

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words and noncognates. Word frequency, however, was reported hav-ing almost no effect on performance. The results support Carter’s (1987) finding that concrete words are learned earlier and more easily than abstract words.

3. Orthography

Orthographical form of a word is one of the elements of word knowl-edge. L2 learners have to master it in two ways: (1) recognizing a written form; and (2) producing a written form that other readers can also recognize. This refers to the ability to write and to spell accu-rately (Ryan 1997). Spelling provides a visible representation of pho-nological and orthographic understanding (Strattman/Hodson 2005). In alphabet language systems, the primary unit of representation is a phoneme; the segmental nature of the information represented by in-dividual symbols requires learners to attend to the systematic analysis of component letters and letter clusters within a word (Koda 1999). Mastery of alphabetic literacy requires competence in decoding words into phonemes and morphemes (see Shankweilert/Lundquist 1992).

3.1. Word decoding

Decoding is the ‘phonological conversion of visually presented words’ (Hamada/Koda 2010: 514), and seen as the strongest predictor of ac-quiring orthographic knowledge, as the decoding process can form a basis for a new word form to be learned (Share 1995). Some decoding attempts may not be successfully processed due to a learner’s poor decoding skills, or due to unfamiliar spelling. For example, the written form yacht could lead to mispronunciation due to unfamiliar form (Ricketts et al. 2011). Analyses of specific features of orthography can be used to predict the order of word learning. Elbro (2006) suggested a sequence of lexical acquisition in Danish by analyzing the following

The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts 61 intraword structural patterns: (1) learning of one-letter-to-one-sound correspondences; (2) learning of vowel-consonant combinations; (3) learning of spelling based on morphemic orthographic knowledge; and (4) learning of word-specific orthographic patterns. The order of learning Danish orthography therefore can predict that one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondences are learned first, and then more complicated and unusual patterns are learned later.

A recent longitudinal word decoding study conducted by Ver-hoeven and van Leeuwe (2009) investigated the growth of word-decoding skills with 2,819 Dutch children in three orthographical pat-terns: (1) regular consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words; (2) com-plex monosyllabic words with consonant clusters in immediately pre-ceding a vowel and immediately following a vowel positions; and (3) polysyllabic words. The findings suggested a Dutch orthography de-velopment order and showed children were most successful at decod-ing CVC patterns, and then monosyllabic words with consonant clus-ters; polysyllables were the least successful word group to be decoded by the participants. The results also suggested that the children’s abil-ity of decoding of words slows as the word length and orthographic complexity increases. Hence, one assumption that can be raised is that word length affects learners’ word decoding ability, and, in turn, af-fects word learnability.

3.2. Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (ODH)

The ease of word decoding may differ across languages depending on their orthographic depth (Frost/Katz/Bentin 1987). Katz and Frost (1992) proposed the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (ODH) to de-scribe how orthographic depth affects phonological decoding proce-dures across writing systems. In ‘shallow’ orthographies, phonological code is systematically organized in working memory through one-to-one letter-to-sound translation, as is the case in Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, and Korean Hangul. The grapheme-phoneme correspon-dences for these languages are regular, and thus transparent. In con-trast, in less transparent ‘deep’ orthographies, phonological code may be gained only after a word has been identified, depending on the

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learner’s existing lexical knowledge. In other words, orthographic depth refers to the degree of lexical involvement in obtaining a word’s phonology (Koda 1999).

3.3. English orthography

English orthography is classified as a phonologically ‘deep’ writing system. This is because the English language has poor levels of phono-logical transparency and this limits systematic one-to-one letter-to-sound mappings (Koda 1999). In other words, the English language involves considerable inconsistency and irregularity in the spelling of words, making its orthographic structure rather complex to process (Ricketts et al. 2011). Evidence from previous comparison studies indi-cates that the development of word decoding varies between languages.

Word decoding in English has been shown to develop more slowly and less efficiently than in shallow alphabetic languages (see Aro/Wimmer 2003; Ellis/Hooper 2001; Frith/Wimmer/Landerl 1998; Goswami/Gombert/de Barrera 1998; Goswami/Porpodas/Wheelwright 1997; Goswami et al. 2001; Landerl 2000; Patel/Snowling/de Jong 2004; Seymour/Aro/Erskine 2003). Table 1. Syllable structures (Taylor/Taylor 1995: 7).

Structure English word (example) V A CV Go VC At CVC Get CVCC Lend CCVC Glad CCVCC Blend CCCVCCCC Strength CCVCCCC Twelfth

Notes: V=vowel; CV=consonant-vowel; CVC=consonant-vowel-consonant One explanation could be the role of phonemes and syllable struc-tures. Linguistically, two units of speech sounds are the phoneme and the syllable. Some phonemes are called consonants (C) and some are

The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts 63 called vowels (V). A syllable is a vowel or diphthong surrounded by consonants. Different languages allow different syllable structures (Taylor/Taylor 1995). English uses all the structures listed in Table 1.

3.4. L1 cognate

Second language acquisition research has acknowledged language transfer as a critical process for acquiring L2 vocabulary. Transfer is characterized as “the influence resulting from similarities and differ-ences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired” (Odlin 1989: 27). Holmes and Guerra Ramos (1995) defined cognates as lexical items in two different languages that are similar both orthographically and semantically. Spanish-English bilingual learners have been shown to recognize cognate stems in suffixed words more than noncognate stems in suffixed words, supporting a transfer theory. Hancin-Bhatt and Nagy (1994) suggested cross-language transfer is essential for the learning of English derivational morphology rules.

3.4.1. L1 orthographic distance Studies have examined L1 word decoding with children (Share 2004; Ricketts et al. 2011; Verhoeven/van Leeuwe 2009). In L2 contexts, learners’ first language (L1) background and alphabetic orthography systems (or logographies) are seen as relevant. The degree of similar-ity between L1 and L2 orthographies is a significant determinant for transferred decoding skills to function in the L2 (Hamada/Koda 2010). The idea is that for learners whose L1 orthographic properties are similar to the L2, their L1 decoding skills can be applied to the L2. However, if their L1 and L2 orthographic systems are not similar, they may face difficulties with the transfer process. We may assume that when learners whose L1 is orthographically dissimilar to the L2, they would need more time and effort to accurately decode the L2 word in order to master the word. This is the so-called ‘orthographic distance effect’ (Hamada/Koda 2010: 517).

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Koda (1999) examined orthographic (intraword structure) sensi-tivity and decoding skills among adult L2 learners from alphabetic (Korean) and non-alphabetic (Chinese) L1 backgrounds. The findings showed that both groups of L2 learners did not differ in their judgment of allowable orthographic structures when processing high-frequency or visually familiar English letter-strings. However, Korean learners performed significantly better than Chinese learners in identifying false low-frequency letter-strings. The findings suggest that L1 alpha-betic experience promotes L2 (English) orthographic sensitivity. In other words, different groups of ESL learners may vary widely in the extent to which their intraword sensitivity affects decoding.

Hamada and Koda (2008) conducted a further experimental study to test the hypothesis that congruity in L1 and L2 orthographic experi-ences determines L2 decoding efficiency with Korean and Chinese background L2 English learners. The participant performance was measured by a pseudoword naming task with phonologically regular and irregular conditions. The results showed that Korean learners performed better overall in retention, whereas Chinese learners performed better with irregular word forms. The explanation for the results may relate to the use of one syllable to represent one morpheme in Chinese, which is in turn represented by one Chinese character (Taylor/Taylor 1995). The finding provided evidence of the effect of distance of L1 orthography and L1 orthographic experience in L2 word learning processes, which is consistent with previous studies that provided strong empirical support for the congruity effect on L2 decoding efficiency (see Green/Meara 1987; Koda 1999, 2000; Muljani/Koda/Moates 1998; Wang/Koda/ Perfetti 2003). Hamada and Koda’s (2010) more recent study also sup-ported this hypothesis by suggesting that similarity between L1 and L2 orthographic properties promotes L2 decoding efficiency.

English orthography is governed by phonemic constraints, yet it tends to favour morphological information at the expense of phono-logical transparency (Hamada/Koda 2008). Hence, “many spelling irregularities in English are more readily explained by morphological, rather than phonemic, regularities” (Hamada/Koda 2008: 5). In other words, many of the phonographic irregularities of English are due to the conservation of a different sort of regularity, that between spelling and lexical meaning (i.e. morphemes) (Henderson 1982).


4. Morphology

Morphology is the study of various parts of word form in language. The explicit understanding of word structure is morphological aware-ness (MA). The units of decomposition in MA are affixes and root words. Words are made up of morphemes. Morphemes are the small-est meaning-bearing units. Morphemes serve both a grammatical func-tion through inflection (e.g. plural -s or past tense -ed) and a lexical function through derivation (e.g. -ic changes nouns to adjectives, as in class to classic), or compounding (e.g. book + mark) (Jarmulowicz etal. 2007). Each word must consist of at least one morpheme. The most frequently occurring morphemes are affixes (Minkova/Stockwell 2009). Thus, comprehension of affix knowledge development is es-sential for vocabulary growth and for gaining new insights into the process of vocabulary acquisition.

4.1. Affix (learnability)

Affixes have two different functions. Derivational affixes, both pre-fixes and suffixes, are used to form new words. Inflectional affixes are part of syntax, and can be used to indicate tense or plural forms. L1 studies show that learners increase their affix knowledge incremen-tally as they advance through elementary school and into high school (see Nagy/Diakidoy/Anderson 1993; Tyler/Nagy 1989). However, little is known with regard to how L2 learners develop their affix knowledge. Bauer and Nation (1993: 255-256) proposed a series of levels of affixes and suggested that affix learnability is higher for some affixes than others. The seven levels are: (1) each form is a dif-ferent word; (2) inflectional suffixes; (3) the most frequent and regular derivational affixes; (4) frequent, orthographically regular affixes; (5) regular but infrequent affixes; (6) frequent but irregular affixes; (7) classical roots and affixes. Lower level affixes are acquired more eas-ily within this model. The levels were decided according to eight crite-ria: affix frequency (e.g. -er is a frequent suffix), productivity (e.g. -ly

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and -ness are frequently used to make words, but not en- and -most), predictability (e.g. one of the meanings of -less is rare), regularity of the written form of the base, regularity of the spoken form of the base, regularity of the spelling of the affix, regularity of the spoken form of the affix, and regularity of function (e.g. -ess always attaches to nouns and always produces nouns).

Using this model, Mochizuki and Aizawa (2000) indicated the accuracy order of some prefixes and suffixes by examining a group of Japanese EFL learners. They considered this accuracy order to be an acquisition order of affixes, since affixes known by more learners are learned earlier than those known by fewer. In this sense, they assumed that affixes known by learners with a small vocabulary size are ac-quired earlier. An earlier study by Mochizuki (1998) reported that the affix accuracy order could suggest some affixes were easier to be learned than others. Hence, the accuracy order might determine the relative learnability of a particular affix.

4.2. Derivatives

Knowing one member of a word family may facilitate receptive knowledge of the other members (Bauer/Nation 1993). Even highly proficient L2 learners can produce unacceptable word forms. Schmitt and Zimmerman (2002) investigated a group of graduate and under-graduate nonnative-English-speaking students’ productive class-changing derivational knowledge in the four major word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The results indicated that the participants normally produced two or three forms of the derivatives, which was seen as partial word family knowledge. The researchers suggested that a strong facilitative effect does not work in productive derivatives. In this case, L2 learners may face difficulty in knowing an entire word family, even when they already know one or more mem-bers. The finding further showed that the participants increasingly gained noun and verb derivatives at each stage of a four-stage devel-opmental scale, but not so with adjective and adverb forms. The find-ing was consistent with Ellis and Beaton’s (1993) claim that part of speech is a strong determinant of a word’s learnability.


Recent research related to inflectional and derivative suffixes was conducted by Hayashi and Murphy (2011) to investigate a group of Japanese ESL learners’ degree of morphological awareness, both receptively and productively, and its relationship with learner vocabu-lary size. Two types of tasks, receptive measures and productive measures, were used to examine the knowledge of inflectional suf-fixes, class-maintaining affixes, and class-changing affixes. The re-sults indicated that Japanese learners performed better on the class-maintaining affixes and inflectional suffixes in receptive word seg-mentation tasks. The findings showed that the accuracy for inflec-tional suffixes was significantly higher than the other two types of affixes, and that the accuracy of class-maintaining affixes was slightly higher than class-changing affixes in the productive task of affix elici-tation. The researchers indicated that the results might be potentially influenced by affix semantic transparency rather than productivity and frequency in terms of the relationship between the affixes and their base. In addition, the researchers reported that neither receptive nor productive vocabulary knowledge is related to the participants’ mor-phological awareness.

5. Word length

Information about whether orthographic structure affects the learnabil-ity of target letter-strings (e.g. CVC) can provide information about how learners engage with the internal parts of target words. There is evidence that shorter words are acquired more easily than longer words, and that longer words require more effort to be processed and remembered. Dutch children’s ability of decoding words has been shown to slow as word length increases (Verhoeven/van Leeuwe 2009). In addition, word learnability is subject to the so-called bathtub effect (Aitchison/Straf 1981) which describes the phenomenon that learners are likely to remember initial word parts and final word parts more than the middle parts of a word, as if the word were a person

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lying in a bathtub, with their head out of the water at one end and their feet out at the other. In addition, Aitchison and Straf (1981) found that the initial parts of short words can be remembered better than initial parts of long words, whereas final parts of long words can be remem-bered better than final parts of short words.

Taking a productive lexical perspective, longer words often cause more room for error (Ellis/Beaton 1993), and these words are often retrieved and produced partially (Barcroft/Rott 2010). The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state may explain this phenomenon (see Aitchi-son/Straf 1981; Brown/McNeill 1966; Meyer/Bock 1992) which refers to the failure to retrieve a complete word from memory. Individuals in a tip-of-the-tongue state often partially recall one or more features of the target word, such as initial letters. Hence, partial word production can be assumed to be owing to learners’ deficient word-form activa-tion (i.e. the TOT state) (Meyer/Bock 1992). In this case, word length can be considered as an important determinant of success in word learnability and retrieval.

Barcroft (2008) investigated the effect of word length on L2 word learnability, specifically the percentage of partially versus fully produced words. He measured the number of partial words, the length of fragments in partial words, and the location of target letters pro-duced in partial words with 25 English-speaking learners of Spanish. The participants were given 24 concrete noun word-picture pairs in-cluding different word lengths. They were two-, three-, four-, and five-syllable target words. The results showed that the learners pro-duced 69% partial words and 31% complete words, and a high per-centage of one-letter fragments. However, the students produced more three-fourths of a word than one-half or one-fourth of the word. In other words, longer letter-strings were produced more often than shorter letter-strings. This finding challenges the hypothesis that shorter letter-strings are learned more easily than longer letter-strings. In terms of word position, target letters in word-initial position were produced more frequently than in other positions. This finding reflects the ‘bathtub effect’.

Barcroft and Rott (2010) expanded on the research of Barcroft (2008) and examined partial word form learning in L2 German and Spanish using an L1-to-L2 translation task. The students produced

The Nature of Word Learnability in L2 Contexts 69 49% more partial words than complete words. The results also indi-cated that two-syllable words were fully produced more often than three-syllable words, and that one-letter fragments were produced more often than two-letter fragments for both languages. The results were consistent with Barcroft’s (2008) previous findings.

6. Summary

Viewed as a whole, the ease or difficulty of an L2 word form to be learned depends in part on its orthographic nature, such as letter-sound correspondences, orthographic patterns, and the distance between L1 and L2 orthographies. In addition, the relationship between affix knowledge and word learnability is evident, for which derivational morphological knowledge appears to be the most difficult part to be acquired for ESL learners. The combined factors of (1) affix fre-quency, (2) affix productivity, and (3) affix semantic transparency appear to have a significant effect on word learnability. In addition, evidence suggests that producing longer words can be problematic for learners of English; however, there is insufficient research to date examining the extent of the problem.

7. Implications for future research

Research on the learnability of L2 written form has acknowledged word length (Ellis/Beaton 1993), L1 cognate (Hamada/Koda 2008), degree of sound-letter correspondence (Koda 1999), letter-strings probabilities (Verhoeven/van Leeuwe 2009), and morphological trans-parency (Zhang/Koda 2011) as key factors during the process of lexical encoding and retrieval while learning new words. Neverthe-

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less, these studies tell us little about how word knowledge components concurrently contribute to L2 word learnability.

To capture the multiple features of a word and their combined effect on L2 word learnability, investigation of multiple aspects of vocabulary knowledge is required. Future studies could be designed to test the hypothesized relationships between the multiple features of a lexical item and their impact on acquiring the L2 word across diverse linguistic groups. Adopting a specific focus on written form, key questions may involve, for example: (1) What are the key features that affect L2 word learnability? (2) What is the relationship between these features that affect L2 word learnability across different L1 groups?

Through the discussion above, we noticed that word knowledge and word learnability have tended to be studied separately. We can also observe that there is a surprising lack of empirical research on L2 word learnability, including the influence of L2 learners’ L1 experiences on the learnability of lexical items. Future L2 vocabulary research in this area could indicate the extent to which the ease or difficulty with which a word can be learned is shaped by different aspects of word knowledge across different L1 groups, to shed more light on the role of L2 word learnability in second language vocabulary acquisition.

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Section 3 Conditions for Learning

YU-TSE LEE / DAVID HIRSH

Quality and Quantity of Exposure in L2 Vocabulary Learning

1. Introduction

Of concern to second language researchers and instructors alike is to identify vocabulary practice activities that provide good opportunities for learners to acquire new words. For researchers, a central question in understanding vocabulary learning is whether retention depends more on what one does with the word or how often one meets it.

Previous studies have provided some explanations of why cer-tain vocabulary practice activities appear to be more effective than others in promoting L2 vocabulary acquisition (see De la Fuente 2002; Joe 1995; Paribakht/Wesche 1997; Rott 2004). Analysing different types of task in their respective research, these studies shed light on common features of effective tasks. Their findings regarding what makes particular tasks more effective than others revealed that exer-cises or activities requiring more mental effort on the learner’s part result in improved retention of L2 vocabulary.

A number of empirical attempts have been made to define this notion more precisely. An early theoretical framework is the construct of ‘Depth of Processing Hypothesis’ proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972) in the field of cognitive psychology. More recently, in order to provide a more observable and measurable construct of depth of proc-essing as well as to link these general cognitive notions to the second language acquisition field, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) formulated the ‘Involvement Load Hypothesis’ by providing three specific elements to observe the depth of processing, named ‘involvement load’.

To date, a few studies have tested Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis and produced close findings (see Hul-

80 Yu-Tse Lee / David Hirsh

stijn/Laufer 2001; Keating 2008; Kim 2008). They found that a task with higher task-induced involvement load (i.e. quality of exposure) resulted in improved vocabulary retention. However, Folse (2006) found that multiple retrievals of a target word (i.e. frequency of expo-sure to the word) had an important effect on vocabulary learning, ar-guing that the important feature of a given vocabulary exercise is not what learners do with a word but how often they meet it.

This chapter reports on a study which empirically measured the relative effects on immediate learning and longer term retention of vocabulary of quality of exposure and quantity of exposure to new vocabulary in two commonly used types of vocabulary practice activi-ties: multiple-choice question (MC) and original sentence writing (OSW), by varying task involvement loads (based on Laufer/Hulstijn 2001) and varying the number of exposures to the investigated words (i.e. the number of tasks).

2. The role of vocabulary in second language acquisition

Empirical studies have shown the effect that a large L2 vocabulary knowledge base has in the context of writing (Laufer 1991; Laufer/ Nation 1995; Morris/Cobb 2004), listening (Flowerdew/Miller 1992; Nation 2006) and speaking (Joe 1995; Newton 1995). The results of the research suggest that good L2 readers, writers, speakers and listen-ers have a more extensive vocabulary under their control.

One of the main difficulties facing L2 learners is the vast num-ber of words they need to acquire in order to become effective users of their L2. Teachers might well understand this need but might not know how best to support their students in this endeavour. Therefore, from a pedagogical point of view, there is clearly a need for research that helps to identify the types of learning activities that provide opti-mal opportunities for L2 vocabulary learning.

Quality and Quantity of Exposure in L2 Vocabulary Learning 81

2.1. Incidental and implicit learning

One line of thought is that the bulk of word learning in a second lan-guage occurs incidentally via extensive reading (Krashen 1989). A major concern within this view is that acquiring new words via exten-sive reading entails that learners know enough words to read without difficulty in the target language (Coady 1997). Further, vocabulary acquisition via extensive reading might be limited as successful read-ing comprehension is contingent upon knowing around 95% to 98% of the words in a written text (Hirsh/Nation 1992; Hu/Nation 2000; Na-tion 2001). Empirical studies investigating word learning via exten-sive reading have reported modest gains of around three to seven words retained per text read (Horst 2005; Laufer 2003). The findings suggest that vocabulary learning via extensive reading could be slow and gradual (Nation 2001) with a process of each new meeting with a word adding to or strengthening the small amounts of knowledge gained from previous meetings with the word.

The limitation of word learning via extensive reading is also evident in Zimmerman’s (1997) study. The results showed that L2 vocabulary retention is higher for students who complete written vo-cabulary activities after a reading task than for students who do with-out written vocabulary activities after the reading task. Hill and Laufer (2003) also found that post-reading tasks explicitly focusing on target words would lead to better vocabulary learning than comprehension questions which required knowledge of the target words’ meaning. In light of these findings, Laufer (2005) proposed that word-focused activities are indispensable for L2 lexical acquisition.

2.2. Factors affecting the effectiveness of vocabulary exercise

A number of studies have provided possible explanations for why certain tasks are more effective than other tasks in promoting L2 vo-cabulary acquisition (De la Fuente 2002; Joe 1995; Paribakht/Wesche 1997; Rott 2004). De la Fuente (2002) compared the effect of input, negotiation, and negotiation with ‘pushed output’ on receptive and productive word acquisition. The results showed that negotiation with


pushed output and negotiation without pushed output are equally ef-fective for receptive acquisition, but negotiation with pushed output is more effective for productive acquisition and retention. De la Fuente (2002) concluded that learners’ overall vocabulary acquisition was greater when they had the opportunity to negotiate and produce the target vocabulary (i.e. negotiation plus output) than when they were simply exposed to target words (i.e. input alone).

Joe (1995) had earlier reached a similar conclusion, finding that tasks requiring a high degree of generative process (e.g. learner-generated original context) facilitated more efficient incidental vo-cabulary acquisition than tasks requiring a low degree of generative process (e.g. contexts memorised from text) or no generation at all. She suggested that cognitive processing would enhance vocabulary learning with greater levels of generative processing, leading to greater vocabulary gains for unknown words.

Paribakht and Wesche (1997) compared word learning in a ‘reading only’ condition using eight texts and in a ‘reading plus’ con-dition using four texts and various vocabulary exercises. The results found that tasks that required students to practice new words in post-reading vocabulary focused exercises (i.e. ‘reading plus’ group) led to significantly better retention of vocabulary than when students partici-pated in a reading-only treatment that provided exposure to target words in texts.

Overall, these studies revealed that exercises or activities that require more mental effort on the learners’ part result in better reten-tion of vocabulary. The construction of this theoretical framework can be traced back to the ‘Depth of Processing Hypothesis’ proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972).

2.3. Depth of Processing Hypothesis

In the cognitive psychology field, Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) Depth of Processing Hypothesis laid the basic groundwork by stating that the chance that some piece of new information will be stored in long-term memory is not determined by the length of time that is held in short-term memory but rather by the shallowness or depth with which it is


initially processed. Simply put, the more attention given to an item, and the more manipulation involved with the item, the greater the chances it will be remembered.

Craik and Tulving (1975) refined this hypothesis and specified that the depth of processing is supplemented by the concept of the de-gree with which the information is encoded. This refined hypothesis, however, was challenged for its limitation of not being measurable. Two of the major limitations were: (1) what exactly constitutes a ‘depth’ of processing (Baddeley 1997), and (2) how do we know that one level is ‘deeper’ than another? (Craik/Tulving 1975; Laufer/Hulstijn 2001). In order to provide a more observable and measurable construct of depth of processing as well as to link these general cognitive notions specifically to second language acquisition field, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) formulated the ‘Involvement Load Hypothesis.’

2.4. The Involvement Load Hypothesis

As an attempt to operationalise the abstract notion of Depth of Proc-essing Hypothesis (Craik/Lockhart 1972) which is assumed to be the key to word learning and retention, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) pro-posed a motivational-cognitive construct of ‘involvement’ to capture the degree of cognitive processing of an L2 learner required by a given vocabulary learning task. The construct of involvement is com-posed of three components: need, search, and evaluation (see Table 1). Laufer and Hulstijn contend that the degree to which an L2 learner is engaged in cognitive processing does not depend on whether the given task is input or output-based, but rather on the combination of motivational and cognitive dimensions of the task, which was termed ‘involvement load.’

Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) claim that word learning and reten-tion in a second language are contingent upon a task’s involvement load, that is, the amount of ‘need’, ‘search’ and ‘evaluation’ the task imposes. As Table 1 illustrates, each of the three components can be categorised as absent or present when processing a word during tasks.


Table 1. Three components of involvement (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).

Compo-nents Feature Operationalisation Prominence

Need Motivational Whether knowledge of new words is required to complete a given task

Absent (0) Moderate (1) Strong (2)

Search Cognitive The attempt learners make to ascertain the meaning of unknown words in a task

Absent (0) Present (1)

Evaluation Cognitive Comparing a new word with other words and making a decision as to its suitability in a given context

Absent (0) Moderate (1) Strong (2)

The absence of a factor is marked as 0, a moderate presence of a factor as 1, and a strong presence as 2.

‘Need’ component is the motivational, noncognitive dimension of involvement and refers to whether knowledge of new words is re-quired to complete a given task (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001). ‘Need’ can occur in three degrees of prominence: absent (0), moderate (1) and strong (2). ‘Need’ is hypothesised to be moderate when it is externally imposed either by tasks or teachers (i.e. when the teacher asks stu-dents to fill in a word in a sentence) and strong when it is self-imposed by learners (i.e. when learners decide to look up a new word in a dic-tionary during a composition to fulfil their own needs). ‘Search’ refers to the attempt learners make to ascertain the meaning of unknown words in a task. Although ‘need’ can occur in three degrees of promi-nence (i.e. absent, moderate and strong), ‘search’ is not conceptualised as the relative degree of cognitive processing; instead, it is either ab-sent (0) or present (1). ‘Search’ happens when the learner tries to find the meaning of an unknown L2 word in a dictionary or from other sources, such as teachers and peers, and is absent when no such effort is required (i.e. reading comprehension tasks accompanied by mar-ginal glosses). Furthermore, search can occur when the direction of translation is from the L1 into the L2 or vice versa.


‘Evaluation’ requires comparing a new word with other words and making a decision as to its suitability in a given context. This could occur through comparing a given word with other known words in the L1 or the L2, a specific meaning of a word with its other mean-ings, or a word with other words in order to assess whether a word fits its context (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001). ‘Evaluation’ can happen without ‘search’ if the meaning of the target word is explicitly provided by the text or a teacher. As shown in Table 1, Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) saw the presence of evaluation as comprising three potential degrees of cognitive processing: absent (0), moderate (1) and strong (2). Moder-ate evaluation requires recognising differences between words, whereas strong evaluation involves making a decision as to how addi-tional words will work in combination with the new word in an origi-nal sentence or text.

Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) proposed that the involvement load of a given task is determined by the combination of the presence or absence of the involvement factors: need, search and evaluation. That is the sum of the scores for need, search, and evaluation, and this value is also called the task’s involvement index. Therefore, the total possible range of an involvement index for any task can vary from 0 (0+0+0) to 5 (2+1+2). The Involvement Load Hypothesis claims that the higher the level of the involvement load index is, the more effec-tive the task is in promoting vocabulary acquisition.

2.5. Research on the Involvement Load Hypothesis

Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) validated the Involvement Load Hypothe-sis via two parallel experiments involving advanced Dutch and He-brew-speaking learners of English. Learners in both experiments were randomly assigned to one of three tasks. Participants assigned to task 1 (reading comprehension with marginal glosses) read a passage and answered multiple-choice comprehension questions that required knowledge of ten target words. The target words were highlighted in the text and glossed in the margin. Participants assigned to task 2 (reading comprehension plus cloze) received the same passage and comprehension questions as task 1 but with the target words removed


and replaced with blank spaces. Their task was to fill in the missing blanks using a list of words provided. Participants receiving task 3 (composition writing incorporating target words) used the target words to write an original composition in the form of a letter to a newspaper editor.

The involvement load components ‘need’ and ‘search’ were held constant in the three tasks. ‘Need’ was moderate (value = 1) because it was induced by the task and ‘search’ was absent (value = 0) because meaning of words was provided in the gloss, such that the tasks only varied in terms of the ‘evaluation’ they induced. In task 1, evaluation was absent (value = 0), in task 2 it was moderate (value = 1, because the context for word comparison was provided), and in task 3 it was strong (value = 2, because words had to be used in original contexts), such that task 1 had an involvement index value of 1, task 2 an involvement index of value 2, and task 3 an involvement score of value 3.

To measure learning of the words, Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) asked students to provide the L1 translation or English explanations for the ten target words immediately after the completion of the task. Additionally, to measure students’ retention, they administered the same test again one week later in the Netherlands and two weeks later in Israel. The results of the experiments found that task 3 was superior to tasks 1 and 2 in term of vocabulary retention. The results of the experiment support the hypothesis that words that are processed with higher involvement load will be retained better than words that are processed with lower involvement load.

More recently, Kim (2008) conducted two experiments investi-gating the effect of the Involvement Load Hypothesis in terms of vo-cabulary learning. Experiment 1 compared the performance of 64 adult ESL learners from a range of countries at two different profi-ciency levels (i.e. matriculated undergraduate students versus students in an Intensive English Program) to ascertain the effectiveness of three vocabulary tasks with different levels of task-induced involvement. Experiment 2 investigated whether two tasks hypothesised to repre-sent the same level of task-induced involvement would result in equivalent initial learning and retention of target words by 20 adult ESL learners at two different levels of proficiency. The results of the two experiments corroborated Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) hypothe-


sis. Experiment 1 indicated that the higher involvement induced by the task resulted in more effective initial vocabulary learning and better retention of the new words. Experiment 2 provided some evidence that tasks were equally beneficial for vocabulary learning when their involvement loads were the same.

Keating (2008) also tested the claim that word learning and re-tention in a L2 are contingent upon a task’s involvement load with 79 beginning learners of Spanish. Participants were required to complete one of three vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount of involvement induced: reading comprehension with marginal gloss (1+0+0 = 1), reading comprehension plus gap-filling (1+0+1 = 2), and writing original sentences using the target words (1+0+2 = 3). Partici-pants’ receptive and productive knowledge of the target words was assessed immediately after treatment and two weeks later. In line with the predictions of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, retention was highest in the sentence writing task, lower in the reading plus fill-in task, and lowest in the reading comprehension task.

Applying Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hy-pothesis, Folse (2006) compared the effect of different written vo-cabulary exercises (i.e. fill-in-the-blank versus original sentence writ-ing) on L2 word learning in conditions differing in involvement loads, but also in the number of word retrievals. 154 university intensive English program students practised the same target vocabulary in three types of exercises conditions: one fill-in-the-blank exercise, three fill-in-the-blank exercises, and one original-sentence-writing exercise. An unannounced post-test was conducted measuring the meaning of the target words and usage of the target word in a learner-generated sentence. However, contrary to the predictions of the In-volvement Load Hypothesis, the results revealed that three fill-in-the-blank exercises (i.e. involvement index of four and more repetitions) was more effective than writing original sentence (i.e. involvement index of 5 and no repetition) in terms of vocabulary retention. Folse (2006) argued that an important factor to explain the effectiveness of tasks could be multiple retrievals of the word (i.e. frequency of expo-sure to the word), and concluded that how often a word is met has more of an impact on word learning than what a learner does when meeting the word.


3. The current study

A few studies have tested Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis and produced similar findings that the higher task-induced involvement load a task carries (i.e. quality of exposure), the more effective the task would be in promoting vocabulary retention (Hulstijn/Laufer 2001; Keating 2008; Kim 2008). Folse (2006), how-ever, found that the key factor to explain the effectiveness of tasks on subsequent vocabulary learning is multiple retrievals of the word (i.e. frequency of exposure to the word) and not task-induced involvement load. Folse (2006) proposed that the important feature of a given vo-cabulary learning task is not what learners do with a word but how often they meet it.

Folse (2006) has called for future studies that might examine different combinations of exercise types in order to further provide empirical evidence on the importance of repetition in vocabulary learning. In addition to gap-filling exercises employed by Folse (2006), multiple-choice questions and original sentence writing are other forms of vocabulary practice activities used widely in EFL class-room settings.

The current study investigates whether task type (i.e. the quality of exposure) or the number of tasks (i.e. the quantity of exposure; frequency) more effectively promotes vocabulary learning both in the short term and long term, using two types of vocabulary practice ac-tivities: multiple-choice questions (MC) and original sentence writing (OSW), by varying task involvement load (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001) and varying the number of exposures to the investigated words (i.e. the number of tasks). The study’s research question is:

How does exercise condition affect initial learning and retention of new vocabulary?


3.1. Participants

Participants were 131 Year 8 students at a public junior high school in northern Taiwan. The participants were between 15 and 16 years old. In Taiwan, students officially start to learn English in their first year of junior high school (aged 13 to 14) and these participants have been learning English for around one year and a half. Taiwan is an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting in which learners generally have minimal opportunities to use English for communicative purpose out-side the classroom. Participants recruited in the current study are con-sidered to have similar educational backgrounds and similar level of English proficiency.

3.2. Experimental instruments

The current study utilised a repeated measures experimental design in which the same subjects are used for each treatment. The primary strengths of the repeated measures design are that it makes an experi-ment more efficient and helps keep the variability low (Field 2009). Three experimental conditions were employed: one set of multiple choice questions (MC) as condition 1; three sets of different multiple choice questions (MCs) as condition 2; and one set of original sen-tence writing (OSW) as condition 3. These conditions represent dif-ferent involvement loads as indicated in Table 2.

3.2.1. Condition 1 (One multiple-choice exercise)

According to Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hy-pothesis, this task condition would induce a moderate ‘need’ because this ‘need’ was externally imposed by the task, rather than by the stu-dents. No ‘search’ is generated because the target words were glossed with meanings provided. Additionally, moderate ‘evaluation’ would be induced because the participants need to check the meaning pro-vided to decide which word best fits the given context in the multiple-choice question. In terms of task-induced involvement load, condition 1 therefore induced moderate need (value = 1), no search (value = 0)


and moderate evaluation (value = 1), which indicated an involvement index value of 2 (1 + 0 + 1 = 2). Table 2. The comparison of the three exercise conditions.

Condition Conceptualisation Involvement Load Involvement Index

One multiple-choice exercise (MC)

Low involvement Single exposure

Moderate need (1) No search (0) Moderate evaluation (1)

1 + 0 + 1 = 2

Three different multiple-choice exercises (MCs)

Low involvement Multiple expo-sures

Moderate need (1) No search (0) Moderate evaluation (1)

1 + 0 + 1 = 2

One original sen-tence writing (OSW)

High involvement Single exposure

Moderate need (1) No search (0) Strong evaluation (2)

1 + 0 + 2 = 3

3.2.2. Condition 2 (Three multiple-choice exercises)

Condition 2 represents a key manipulation to test Laufer and Hul-stijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis. The research suggests that the benefits associated with more effective tasks are negated or not realised when completion time is taken into account or when com-pletion times are held constant across tasks in the research design (Ellis 1995; Folse 2006; Webb 2007). The current study sets to ad-dress this issue. A key concern is to find out how many multiple-choice questions can be done within the time taken to complete one original sentence writing task. The results of a small scale experiment conducted with five students who did not participate in the main study and with similar proficiency to the participants showed that writing a sentence (condition 3) took approximately three times as long as fin-ishing one multiple-choice question (condition 1) for the same word. Based on this result, it is assumed in the current study that students would be likely to take the same amount of time to do condition 2 as they would for condition 3. Condition 2 was therefore operationalised as practising the target words in three different multiple-choice ques-


tion exercises. According to Laufer and Hulstijn (2001), this condition induced the same ‘need’, ‘search’, and ‘evaluation’ as condition 1 as they are the same type of exercise. Each word in condition 2, how-ever, was practised three times in different multiple-choice questions, though the ‘evaluation’ was moderate as in condition 1. Condition 2 was thereby operationalised to examine whether a word with multiple exposures, though moderately evaluated, could yield better initial learning and longer-term retention than with strong ‘evaluation’ (i.e. condition 3) when time on task is the same.

3.2.3. Condition 3 (One original sentence writing)

Condition 3 is conceptualised as tasks with high involvement load (i.e. quality of exposure) and single exposure. To operationalise condition 3, students are required to practice the target words by producing a meaningful sentence for each. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) proposed that the involvement index of this condition was 3 (1 + 0 + 2 = 3), including moderate need (value = 1), no search (value = 0), and strong evaluation (value = 2). This is because the participants have to gener-ate their own sentences with the target words, which means words must be evaluated to be fit into a learner-generated context and this would induce strong evaluation based on Involvement Load Hypothe-sis (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).

3.3. Target words

Twelve target words were used in the current research:

bandit banquet cactus comet conceit cradle

magnet missile orphan peasant skull yacht

These words were selected according to the following criteria. The major concern is that the selected words in the treatment should be unknown to the participants as the current study is to measure levels of word knowledge retained by the participants after the treatment. To


begin with, the researcher perused the vocabulary study list for senior high school Year 12 students and identified 60 potential low fre-quency words that the participants would not be expected to know.

In the case of the current study, it is undesirable to give a pretest because the pretest itself may alert the participants as to what the treatment concerns and which target words are going to be tested. Even a parallel design may be revealing to the participants. However, a check of knowledge of the target words is still critical. The resultant list of 60 low frequency words were tested with five junior high stu-dents at the same participating school, whose English proficiency is higher than the participants. Results of the test revealed that only three words were known by these five high-proficiency students. As the participants in the current study were of lower language proficiency, the results suggested that the words chosen were appropriate for the study. Twelve target words were thus selected and randomly clustered into three groups to provide three groups of word for three conditions:

Group A: bandit, comet, magnet, peasant Group B: banquet, conceit, missile, skull Group C: cactus, cradle, orphan, yacht

3.4. Vocabulary practice booklet

Vocabulary practice booklets (see Appendix) consisted of the three exercise conditions and twelve target words were used as the treat-ment in this study. The first page provided general instructions, which are in Mandarin to ensure participants’ comprehension. Condition 1 was one page long with four target words, that is one group, practised in one set of multiple-choice question; condition 2 was two pages long with another group of target word practised in three sets of different multiple-choice questions; condition 3 was one page long with the remaining four target words practised by making original sentences using each of the target words.

Each participant practised all three groups (i.e. group A, B and C) of target words but with a random assignment of the three conditions (i.e. conditions 1, 2 and 3) to each word group. The randomisation


helped to minimise the effect of any interaction between individual words and the condition so that the results would more reliably reflect the effect of the three exercise conditions. The recency effect, which states that the likelihood of the first and last items on a list to be learned faster than those in the middle (Healy/Havas/Parker 2000), was consid-ered during the development of the materials. The presentation order of the three word groups and of the three conditions was therefore random-ised. This means that, within any one of the six combinations, there were also six possible orderings. Based on these combinations of condi-tions, target word groups, and orderings, 36 different versions of book-lets were created, and were randomly assigned to the participants. The meaning of the target words was glossed in a box at the first page of each exercise condition. An example is given in Table 3. Table 3. Example of the gloss box.

Vocabulary

Chinese translation

Part of speech

(un)countable ( )

banquet /noun /countable

conceit / /noun /uncountable

missile /noun /countable

skull /noun /countable

The target words were alphabetically listed in each gloss box. The gloss box contained pertinent information regarding the meaning of target words in Mandarin translation. This was followed by part of speech, and information on whether the word is countable or uncountable.

3.5. Post-tests

Two unannounced post-tests, adapted from the Vocabulary Knowl-edge Scale (Paribakht/Wesche 1993), were used to assess participants’


knowledge of the target words in terms of meaning (indicated by L1 translation or L2 synonym) and usage (indicated by student-generated sentence in the L2) immediately after and again two weeks after the treatment. This test instrument used a three-point scale (0, 1 and 2) combining self-report and performance items to measure both self-perceived and demonstrated knowledge of specific words in written form. Each score indicates the following level of vocabulary demon-strated knowledge: 0 (not familiar), 1 (correct English synonym or Chinese translation is given), and 2 (target word is used in a meaning-ful sentence). Each condition could receive a score of 0, 1, or 2 de-pending on the level of word knowledge demonstrated by participants in the post-tests. Table 4 illustrates the example of the post-tests and how points would be awarded. Table 4. Example of the post-test.

Vocabulary I don’t know this word

I know this word (Please provide a translation in Chinese or an English synonym)

I can use this word in a good example sentence

Points awarded

family 1

fruit We always have plenty of fruit after dinner.

2

constrain 0

Paribakht and Wesche’s (1993) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale is con-sidered a valid measure of participants’ vocabulary knowledge for this study because it is designed to track levels of word knowledge (Read 2000; Wesche/Paribakht 1996), which fits the need for the current study. Moreover, the strength of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale as a test instrument is that it elicits students’ perceived knowledge of vo-cabulary items and allows verification with demonstrated knowledge.

On the treatment day, each participant was randomly given one of 36 versions of the vocabulary practice booklet. Time for the treat-


ment session was approximately 40 minutes. Participants were ad-vised to turn their treatment booklets face down when completed and to remain quietly seated while they waited for others to finish. When all students had finished, the booklets were collected and the unan-nounced immediate post-test, designed to measure their initial learn-ing, was distributed. All copies of the immediate post-test were col-lected following the test. Two weeks later, the participants received the unannounced delayed post-test, which was a parallel test display-ing the same test items but in a different presentation order, to meas-ure their longer-term (i.e. 2 weeks) retention of the target words. The post-tests were scored separately by the researcher and an independent evaluator trained on the use of the scoring protocol. Blind scoring was used at all times. Scoring discrepancies were discussed between the researcher and the independent evaluator until consensus was reached. To show the degree of agreement among raters, inter-rater reliability using Pearson’s r was calculated. Pearson’s r obtained was .94 for the immediate post-test and .92 for the delayed post-test, indicating a high degree of agreement between the two raters.

3.6. Data analysis

The scores obtained by each condition were analysed with the Statisti-cal Package for the Social Sciences Version 17.0 (SPSS 17.0). Prob-ability coefficient (p), which can range from 0 to 1, measures signifi-cance. A significance level was set to be 0.05 (Dörnyei 2007). The results in this study were assumed to be statistically significant and indicated an effect in the population when p<0.05 (Field 2009). In this study, descriptive statistics were used to summarise the mean score obtained by the three conditions and to compare the effectiveness of the three exercise conditions in terms of vocabulary learning. The standard deviation, which indicates how scores are distributed around the mean, was also calculated.

The current research design requires comparisons of more than two means. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) is therefore used to compare the three exercise conditions. ANOVA provides information whether or not the three exercise conditions differ statistically. In the


current study, the participants are subjected to repeated measures, in which the same subjects are used for each treatment Therefore, re-peated measures ANOVA is adopted. In order to validate repeated measures factor ANOVA, Mauchly’s test is a statistical measure used to test the assumption of sphericity which relates to the equality of the variances of the differences between levels of the repeated measures factor (Field 2009).

An effect size is a measure that gives an indication of the strength of one’s findings, which helps to determine whether a statisti-cally significant difference is a difference of practical concern (Mackey/Gass 2005). Effect size conveys whether an observed differ-ence is substantively important. This is in contrast to a statistical sig-nificance test, which assesses whether a relationship could be due to chance, regardless of the strength of the apparent relationship in the data. In the current study, effect size was calculated using Cohen’s d(Cohen 1992). A standard guide for interpreting effect sizes is that an effect size of .2 is considered small, an effect size of .5 is considered medium, and an effect size of .8 is considered large.

4. Results

4.1. Effect of exercise condition on initial vocabulary learning

The first part of the data analysis concerns the effect of exercise con-dition on initial vocabulary learning. The descriptive statistics firstly summarised participants’ initial vocabulary learning resulting from each exercise condition in post-test 1. The scores of the immediate post-test were then submitted to repeated measures ANOVA with exercise condition as independent variable and score as dependent variable, comparing the three exercise conditions in order to find out which condition had a better result of initial learning. The alpha level for the analysis was set at .05 for tests of significance. Measures of effect sizes using Cohen’s d are also reported in the results.


The descriptive statistics for the immediate post-test of 131 par-ticipants is displayed in Table 5, and provides the information about the mean scores and standard deviations (SD) of the initial learning from the three exercise conditions. The mean indicates the average value for initial learning on the unannounced VKS immediate post-test. Overall, the descriptive statistics indicated that the means for practicing target words three times in three different multiple-choice questions were higher than the means for the other two conditions. Table 5. Descriptive statistics for initial learning by exercise condition.

Condition n Mean SD

1 (one multiple choice) 131 1.66 1.54

2 (three different multiple choice) 131 4.15 2.74

3 (original sentences) 131 2.21 2.20

N = 131

Table 5 shows that, on average, the score of VKS in condition 2 was the highest (4.15). Condition 3 came second (2.21), and condition 1 was the third (1.66). The SD relative to the means in each condition suggests that participants’ performance or their vocabulary knowledge scale as assessed tends to be wide ranging (1.54 to 2.74). Based on the results, doing a vocabulary exercise with the word being practised with three different multiple-choice questions appears to be more ef-fective than the word being practised with making one original sen-tence. This suggests that the quantity of exposure to new vocabulary contributes to initial vocabulary learning.

Repeated measures ANOVA provides information whether there is significant effect of exercise conditions on vocabulary reten-tion. To ensure the accuracy of the results from the repeated measures ANOVA, the study used Mauchly’s test for sphericity, which tests the assumption of sphericity which hypothesises that the variances of the differences between conditions are equal. This assumption needs to be considered when the experiment design has three or more repeated


measures conditions as in the current study. If Mauchly’s test statistics is significant (i.e. p <.05) we would conclude that there are significant differences between the variances of differences and, therefore, the condition of sphericity is not met. In order to meet the assumption of sphericity, Mauchly’s test should be non-significant (i.e. p >.05). In the current study, the output (see Table 6) in SPSS reported the sig-nificance value (.196) of Mauchly’s test which is more than the criti-cal value of .05. Table 6. Mauchly’s test for the scores of the immediate post-test.

Within subjectseffect

Mauchly’sW

Approx.Chi-Square

df Sig

Epsilon

Greenhouse-Geisser

Huynh-Feldt

Lower-bound

Condition .975 3.263 2 .196* .976 0.990 .500

* p >.05 It is thus reasonable to conclude that the variances of differences are not significantly different (i.e. they are roughly equal). In other words, the assumption of sphericity has been met, and further statistical cor-rections for repeated measures ANOVA using Epsilon values were not considered necessary. The values produced by the repeated measures ANOVA were therefore accurate and reliable.

SPSS output (see Table 7) shows the results of the repeated measures ANOVA for the effect of vocabulary exercise conditions. This ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of vocabulary exer-cise condition on the immediate post-test, F (2, 260) = 123.662, p < .001. The results suggest that initial vocabulary learning was signifi-cantly affected by the exercise conditions. This means that each exer-cise condition tested was effective in terms of initial learning. How-ever, the main ANOVA test does not inform us how conditions dif-fered from each other. An ANOVA of contrast variables was con-ducted to contrast significant difference between conditions in order to answer which condition is more effective than the other two in terms of initial vocabulary learning.


Table 7. ANOVA for effect of exercise condition on initial vocabulary learning.

Source Df Type III SS Mean Square F

Condition 2 449.807 224.903 123.662*

Error 260 472.860 1.819

*p< .001 Since repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant difference between the means, an ANOVA of contrast variables was conducted to contrast significant difference between conditions. Table 8. ANOVA for contrast of exercise condition on initial vocabulary learning.

Contrast df Type III SS Mean Square F Effect Size

Conditions 1 versus 2 1 1038.96 1038.96 142.05* .95

Conditions 1 versus 3 1 6.65 6.65 0.96 .09

Conditions 2 versus 3 1 879.38 879.38 111.69* .78

Error 153 1204.62 7.87

*p< .001

As shown in Table 8, there was a significant difference between con-ditions 1 and 2 as well as between conditions 2 and 3. There was no significant difference between conditions 1 and 3. This suggests that, in terms of the effectiveness of exercise conditions, tasks with practic-ing the word in three different multiple-choice questions would be the more effective one compared either with tasks with the word being practised by writing original sentences or tasks with one multiple-choice question. This again suggests that the quantity of exposure to new vocabulary would be more of an impact than the quality of expo-sure in terms of initial learning.

Effect size is a measure that gives an indication of the strength of one’s findings, which helps to determine whether a statistically significant difference is a difference of practical concern. Based on the


results (see Table 8), condition 2 in the current study was proved to have a significant effect on initial vocabulary learning. To determine the importance of this effect in terms of practicality, effect size using Cohen’s d (Cohen 1992) was calculated to provide an objective meas-ure of the strength of this effect that condition 2 bears. A standard guide for interpreting effect size is that an effect size of .2 is consid-ered small, an effect size of .5 is considered medium, and an effect size of .8 is considered large (Cohen 1992). As seen in Table 8, the effect size involving condition 2 was large, reporting .95 (condition 1 versus condition 2) and .78 (condition 2 versus condition 3). This large effect size obtained suggests the practicality of using multiple-choice questions type of exercise with more opportunities of exposure to new words would enhance retention.

When condition 2 is compared with condition 1, it is not sur-prising that condition 2 outperformed. The reason would be that the two conditions are of the same type of exercise and the target words of conditions were practised triple times as those of condition 1. Cor-roborating with Folse’s (2006) findings, with more exposures to new vocabulary, condition 2 yields a better retention result than condition 1. This means the quantity of exposure to new vocabulary improves initial vocabulary learning when task type is the same.

When condition 1 is compared with condition 3, condition 3 was more effective in terms of vocabulary learning. This result sup-ports the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001) in which task effectiveness is determined by the involvement load it induced. The involvement load index rates activities as strong (value = 2), moderate (value = 1), or absent (value = 0) on three essential com-ponents of learner involvement, namely ‘need’, ‘search’, and ‘evalua-tion.’ With this index, condition 1 induced moderate ‘evaluation’, while condition 3 generated a strong ‘evaluation’ when ‘need’ and ‘search’ were held constant. Therefore, condition 3, with a higher involvement index (value = 3) would result in a better vocabulary learning than condition 1 (value = 2). The result shows that, in terms of type of exercise, original sentence writing would better help vo-cabulary learning than practising words in multiple-choice question as it induces higher involvement. This suggests that the quality of expo-


sure to new vocabulary would determine the task effectiveness when task types are different.

When condition 2 is compared with condition 3, the mean score of condition 2 was significantly higher than that of condition 3. This is an important finding because condition 3 was predicted to induce high level of task-induced involvement, according to Laufer and Hulstijn (2001), as learners were required to process the lexis by generating an original sentence. However, with three times of word retrievals but shallow-processed, three MCs (condition 2) yielded a better initial learning result than one OSW (condition 3). The current study pro-duced an outcome which was similar to that of Folse’s (2006) experi-ment, where three fill-in-blanks outperformed one OSW as the former. It could be inferred that the task with more chances of word exposure though with lower involvement load may outperform the one with higher level of involvement when time on task is held the same.

4.2. Effect of exercise condition on vocabulary retention

The second part of the data analysis focuses on the effect of exercise condition on participants’ longer-term retention (i.e. two weeks) of new vocabulary. To find out which condition had better result on re-tention of new vocabulary, the scores of the delayed post-test were submitted to repeated measures ANOVA. Table 9 demonstrates the descriptive statistics of the delayed post-test, including number of participants, mean scores and standard deviation.

The descriptive statistics indicates that the mean score of condi-tion 3 (.73) was slightly higher than that of condition 2 (.65) by 0.08. Condition 1 was the lowest at 0.55. However, compared with the mean scores in the immediate post-test, the means of the delayed post-test were considerably lower, as shown in Figure 1.


Table 9. Descriptive statistics for longer-term retention by exercise condition.

Condition N Mean SD

1 (one multiple choice) 131 .55 1.22

2 (three multiple choices) 131 .65 1.31

3 (original sentences) 131 .73 1.36

The mean scores of the delayed post-test were all less than 1. That is to say, with two weeks duration, the retention of the target words were fading away noticeably, which could be a phenomenon attributed to the nature of incidental encounter with new vocabulary. Based on this result, the effect of these three conditions on long-term retention of new vocabulary appears to be insignificant.

Take condition 2 as an example. In the immediate post-test, the mean score (4.15) was much higher than that of condition 3 (2.21). However, in the delayed post-test (i.e. 2 weeks later), the mean score of condition 2 (.65) appeared to be slightly lower than that of condi-tion 3 (.73). A plausible reason is that the elapsing of time may have lessened the effect of exercise condition on retention of new vocabu-lary, and that, as long-term (two weeks) memory is concerned, a task with higher quality of cognitive processing might produce memory trace which was slightly stronger or nearly the same as a task with lower involvement load but with more chances of exposure to the word.

The effect of each condition on retention of new vocabulary over time is displayed graphically in Figure 1 showing that the effect of exercise condition was gradually lessened over time in two weeks from post-test 1 to post-test 2, and eventually displayed no significant difference of effect between each other.


Figure 1. Effect of the three exercise conditions over time from post-test1 to post-test 2. Scores based on the delayed post-test were submitted to repeated measures ANOVA, with vocabulary exercise condition as independent variable and score as dependent variable, to investigate whether there was an effect of vocabulary exercise condition on participants’ word retention. Mauchly’s test (W= .939, p>.05.) indicated that the assump-tion of sphericity had been maintained. The values produced by the repeated measures ANOVA were therefore accurate and reliable. The results of ANOVA show that the retention of new vocabulary was not significantly affected by exercise conditions, F(2, 260) = 1.564, p>.05. This means that these three exercise conditions contributed no differ-ent effect on retention of new words when the delayed post-test was administered two weeks after the treatment. Because ANOVA re-vealed no significant effect of these three conditions, ANOVA of con-trast variables and effect size were therefore not necessary to be con-ducted. Table 10 details the figures. From the results of the delayed post-test, the effect of the three exercise conditions appears to be less apparent in two weeks duration after the target words were encoun-tered.

01

23

45

Mea

n condition 1

condition 2

condition 3


Table 10. ANOVA for effect of exercise condition on longer-term retention.

Source Df Type III SS Mean Square F

Condition 2 2.204 1.102 1.564

Error 260 183.130 0.704

5. Discussion

The current study operationalised two variables, the quality of exposure and the quantity of exposure to new vocabulary, by exploring the effect on new vocabulary learning and retention brought by multiple-choice question (MC) and original sentence writing (OSW) under three condi-tions, varying in task type but also in the number of tasks, namely: (1) one set of MC, (2) 3 sets of different MCs, and (3) one set of OSW.

Further, the study tests the prediction of Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis in which the effectiveness of a task is determined by the involvement load it induced (i.e. the quality of exposure) during incidental meetings. Table 11 summarises the effect of the three exercise conditions on both initial learning and longer-term retention of new vocabulary.

The results indicated that the mean score of condition 2 (4.15) was significantly higher than that of condition 3 (2.21) and condition 1 (1.66), and all three exercise conditions had significant effect on initial learning of new vocabulary, F (2, 260) = 123.662, p < .001. However, in terms of practicality, condition 2 (i.e. words being practised in three different multiple-choice questions) appears to be more useful as the effect size involving condition 2 is large, reporting .95 (condition 1 versus condition 2) and .78 (condition 2 versus condition 3). This is because condition 2 provides more chances of exposure to new vo-cabulary compared with condition 1. Further, when time on task is the same, condition 2 is also more effective than condition 3, although condition 2 is claimed to have lower task-induced involvement when compared with condition 3 (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).


Table 11. Effect of exercise condition by initial learning and longer-term retention.

Time Condition 1 Condition 2 Condition 3

Initial learning Significant The least effective

Significant The most effective

Significant The 2nd least effective

Longer-term retention

Insignificant The least effective

Insignificant The 2nd least effective

Insignificant The most effective

It appears that tasks providing more chances of exposure to new vo-cabulary though with lower involvement load appear in this study to yield better initial learning results than tasks which claim to have higher involvement load. This is a significant finding. A key factor to explain the success of condition 2 here is multiple exposures. As seen in Folse’s (2006) study, what may be important is not what you do with the target word but rather how many times you meet it. The current study supports the notion that an important factor in L2 vocabulary acquisition is the number of exposure that a learner receives to a given word.

The results from the delayed post-test indicated that long-term retention of a target word was not significantly affected by all three exercise conditions, F(2, 260) = 1.564, p>.05, with all the mean scores of the three exercise conditions declined significantly in two weeks duration. The mean score of condition 1 dropped from 1.66 to .55, and 4.15 from .65 in condition 2, and from 2.21 to .73 in condition 3. These results indicated that effect of the exercise conditions become less apparent and fades out through time. A reason why the mean scores dropped noticeably could be the nature of incidental vocabulary encounter, in which the retention of words becomes weaker with the elapse of time (Herman et al. 1987; Nagy/Herman/Anderson 1985). In language teaching, this suggests that without enough review or recy-cling of the target words, as time passes by, learners would forget new words they have encountered (Folse 2006).

Although the results are not very significant in the delayed post-test, minor differences between scores of condition 2 (.65) and 3 (.73) are noted. These might suggest that tasks, though triggering lower


involvement, with more exposures to the word (condition 2) might still produce retention similar to tasks with higher involvement and only single exposure (condition 3).

5.1. Testing the Involvement Load Hypothesis

Multiple-choice question exercises are usually perceived as a superfi-cial or passive use of vocabulary, especially when compared to writ-ing original sentences. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) claim that multiple-choice questions induce less involvement load than writing original sentences as measured by their involvement index, which rates activi-ties as strong (2), moderate (1), or absent (0) on three essential com-ponents of learner involvement, namely ‘need’, ‘search’, and ‘evalua-tion.’ With this index, multiple-choice question exercises in the cur-rent study are rated as moderate ‘need’ (value = 1), no ‘search’ (value = 0), and moderate ‘evaluation’ (value = 1), for an involvement load index value of 2, while sentence-writing exercises have moderate need (1), no search (0), and strong evaluation (2), for an involvement load index of 3. Following this index, a learner-generated context would garner a higher evaluation rating than teacher or textbook-generated sentences in multiple-choice question exercises.

In this study, however, the mean score for attempting the three different multiple-choice questions exercise (4.15) was higher than that of writing sentences (2.21) and the difference between them was also statistically significant, F (2, 260) = 123.662, p < .001. Contrary to the prediction of Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, the current study found that tasks with lower involvement load could induce results in improved initial learning of L2 vocabulary than tasks with higher involvement load. This was evident in the find-ing of the immediate post-test where it was found that learners were able to better retain and produce a higher number of meaningful sen-tences with target words practised in condition 2 than in condition 3.

To this end, the Involvement Load Hypothesis seems not to fully explain this result. The current study’s findings suggest that mul-tiple-choice question exercises may in fact induce a higher involve-ment load than would be suggested by the Involvement Load Hy-


pothesis (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001). It could be that when learners are attempting condition 2, they might interact with the target words more often (i.e. three times) than in condition 3 (one time) and this would result in more attention on the target word. It could be argued that when a learner encounters the blank in a multiple-choice question exercise, they might be trying out the various words in this slot and perhaps translating many of the words or perhaps remembering some other identical words. This sort of mental effort could be deep proc-essing of or high involvement with the word. It is possible that three components in Involvement Load Hypothesis, namely ‘need’, ‘search’, and ‘evaluation’, might not be equal in terms of their contri-bution to vocabulary learning.

Comparing the quality and quantity of exposure to new words, a crucial question in understanding vocabulary learning is whether re-tention depends on what one does with the word or how often one meets it. In practice, a concern for language instructors is whether type of task or number of tasks is as important in which a new word appears when designing a vocabulary learning activity. In the current study, results showed that learners acquired nearly twice as many words in condition 2 (4.15) as they did in condition 3 (2.21) in the immediate post-test. The findings showed that learners were able to produce a higher number of meaningful sentences with the target words practised in three different multiple-choice questions (condition 2) than with target words practised in writing original sentences (con-dition 3), which requires more mental effort as claimed in the In-volvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).

This highlights a key factor to explain the effectiveness of con-dition 2 because it provides learners with more frequency of exposure to new words. This would suggest that what may be important is not so much task type but rather the number of tasks. Put differently, rather than what you do with the word, how often you meet it may be more important in terms of vocabulary learning. This supports the notion that repetition is considered to be one of the major factors in-volved in the learning of vocabulary (Dempster 1987; Joe 1995; Na-tion 2001; Webb 2007).


5.2. Implications for future research

This research provides suggestions for future research in vocabulary and cognition. The current study focused on one aspect of vocabulary learning: word meaning. Therefore, the findings from the current study provide very specific insights into the effect of task-induced involvement on vocabulary learning. The effect of task-induced in-volvement and word retrieval on word-form learning might differ from their effect on learning word meaning. In order to verify the reli-ability of the Involvement Load Hypothesis and word retrieval more broadly, it would be important to examine different aspects of vocabu-lary learning. Future studies would benefit from investigating the ef-fect of task-induced involvement for different aspects of vocabulary learning (e.g. form, meaning, form-meaning mapping) and different learning contexts (e.g. incidental, intentional).

Furthermore, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (see Paribakht/ Wesche 1993) represents an intriguing attempt to measure some as-pects of quality or depth of vocabulary knowledge, especially for the purpose of tracking the early development of specific words. How-ever, it should be noted that the VKS is a recall test, which is more difficult than a recognition test such as multiple-choice question. A recognition test thus might be more appropriate to determine the early development of words than a recall test. Future studies might employ multiple measures, including recognition tests that are more sensitive to small increases in vocabulary knowledge.

Overall, the inclusion of different types of vocabulary tests would enhance the credibility of research and would offer more spe-cific information regarding how involvement load and word retrieval contribute to the development of both receptive and productive vo-cabulary knowledge.

5.3. Implications for English language teaching

Based on the results of the current study, important implications for language teaching can be drawn. The findings showed that how many times learners meet with the target word may be more important than


what they do with it in terms of vocabulary learning. This would sug-gest that a key factor in the effectiveness of vocabulary exercise is repetition, as found in other empirical studies (Folse 2006; Nation 2001; Webb 2007). In the practice of language teaching, there are multiple ways to practice vocabulary in textbook or classroom activi-ties, such as matching, true-false, multiple-choice, gap-filling, and original sentence wiring. A common myth is that the more elaborate an exercise looks, the more likely a learner is to retain a word that is practised in that kind of activity. The findings of the current study indicate that frequency of exposure is a key in L2 vocabulary learning.

After learners have learned some new vocabulary, the teacher can do an activity such as asking simple questions at various cognitive levels about the word. For example, if students have studied swing, peasant, banquet, cactus, monkey, gorilla and comet, the teacher could ask the whole class these questions to see who can answer first: (a) Which three words are related to animals? (b) Which word is a verb that means to move freely while hanging? (c) What is a plant commonly found in the desert? (d) What is the longest word? This kind of activity takes little teacher preparation. It is interesting and also effective because it forces learners to retrieve the word form or its meaning multiple times.

Regarding the findings of the poor retention results over two weeks, the need for follow-up tasks after the MC/OSW initial tasks must be provided to improve the retention results. According to Na-tion (2001), research has been conducted on the importance of word repetition to improve the learning and retention of new words. Demp-ster (1987) has found that spaced repetition (i.e. the spreading out of repetitions of a word) is more effective to the learning of vocabulary than massed repetition (i.e. the concentration of repetitions of a word). Spaced repetition can be described as giving the same amount of at-tention to a word but spreading it over a longer period of time. To apply spaced repetition in vocabulary teaching, for example, a word might be studied for two minutes now, another two minutes ten min-utes later, one minute the next day, and finally one minute a week later. The total study time of the word is only six minutes but the repe-titions are spread across a week’s time. Following this line of thought, the idea is that the teacher could make an effort to incorporate new vocabulary or review vocabulary in every lesson.


References

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Appendix: Vocabulary Practice Booklet (instructions1)

Two types of vocabulary exercise, multiple choice and original sentence writing, will be included in this practice booklet. Multiple choice: you will be required to judge from contextual clues and sentence meaning and to determine which one of the four options grammatically and semantically fits the sentence, and should be picked as the best answer. For example:

Farmers grow ______________ on the farm. (A) airplanes (B) fruit (C) Halloween (D) computers The best answer is (B) fruit.

Original sentence writing: you will be required to create your own meaningful sentence with the target word. You might not have the ability to express some words in English. With words you can-

1 The booklet provided to participants included instructions in Chinese.


not express in English, Chinese is therefore allowed; however, full English is encouraged. For example:

fruit:We like to eat fruit after dinner because fruit is nutritious.

Take your time. You will be given 45 minutes to complete this vo-cabulary practice booklet.

Multiple-choice (examples) Look at the following information about each word and then circle the best answer in the multiple-choice questions.

Vocabulary

Chinese trans-lation Part of speech

(un)countable

( )





1. The ________flew over a long distance and exploded when it hit the target.

(A) conceit (B) missile (C) skull (D) banquet


2. The food at the _______ was delicious. (A) banquet (B) conceit (C) missile (D) skull

3. The picture of a _______ and crossbones is usually seen on the flag of a pirate ship.

(A) missile (B) skull (C) banquet (D) conceit 4. His _______ made him unpopular at work.

(A) banquet (B) conceit (C) missile (D) skull Original sentence writing (examples) Look at the following information about each word and then write an original sentence using each word as indicated.

Vocabulary

Chinese trans-lation

Part of speech

(un)countable ( )






1. banquet: ______________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ 2. conceit: ______________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ 3. missile: ______________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ 4. skull: ______________________________________________ ________________________________________________________

CHEN-CHUN LIN / DAVID HIRSH

Manipulating Instructional Method: The Effect on Productive Vocabulary Use

1. Introduction

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in successful second (ESL) and foreign (EFL) language acquisition, and how words can most effectively be learned has long been a concern of second lan-guage (L2) teachers and researchers. While there is some suggestion that explicit learning of vocabulary may be responsible for the major-ity of L2 vocabulary acquisition (Laufer 2001; Laufer/Paribakht 1998; Webb 2008), particularly in the case of high frequency words, there is also an important role for incidental vocabulary learning in L2 vo-cabulary learning (Hunt/Beglar 2005; Waring/Takaki 2003), with recognition that vocabulary development through reading may ac-count for most vocabulary learning, particularly beyond high fre-quency words (see Laufer 1994).

One line of enquiry has examined the role of vocabulary knowl-edge in second language writing, with a particular interest in factors that may increase the uptake of new words in writing output. This could be newly acquired words, or words already in a learner’s recep-tive vocabulary knowledge. The motivation behind such research is to inform the teaching and learning context on possible ways to improve the lexical quality of second language writing.

Laufer (1994), in a longitudinal study of changes in the lexical component of L2 student writing over time, found modest improve-ments in lexical richness over two semesters of EFL study for her 48 first year university students in Israel. More recently, Lee and Muncie (2006) found some evidence of increased use of target vocabulary in post-reading composition with the addition of elicit explanation of

118 Chen-Chun Lin / David Hirsh

vocabulary by the teacher prior to writing. Webb (2009) found greater uptake of vocabulary in writing when vocabulary instruction involved productive use of words, and a corresponding higher score in reading comprehension when the vocabulary learning focused on receptive knowledge. Overall, current research suggests possible benefits for second language writers in receiving explicit vocabulary instruction in addition to implicit learning through reading, with reasonable results in delayed writing tasks, although the data also signals a slow process in transferring partially known words from receptive knowledge into productive use. Further research in this area seems warranted, in light of the importance of writing tasks in the assessment of students in tertiary settings.

The present study seeks to compare the effectiveness of two types of vocabulary learning approaches – explicit vocabulary teach-ing and incidental vocabulary learning from reading – on productive use of academic words in a subsequent writing task.

2. Second language vocabulary learning

The notion of ‘knowledge of more vocabulary is always better’ holds considerable appeal in ESL and EFL contexts (Schmitt 2008: 330), with general acceptance of the concept that second language (L2) learners need to acquire a substantial vocabulary to achieve compe-tency in the L2 (Hinkel 2006). There is evidence that lexical compe-tence is a strong predictor of language proficiency in both a second language (ESL) and a foreign language (EFL) context (Stæhr 2008). While it is widely accepted that mastering a second language involves learning L2 words, it is less clear how words can most effectively be learned, particularly when the focus is on written use of the language.

Traditional techniques of demonstrating new lexical items in class or requiring students to memorise vocabulary lists appear to be old-fashioned and out-dated in current L2 language programs (Read 2004), where terms such as contextualised learning and depth of proc-

Manipulating Instructional Method 119

essing are becoming catch phrases. While there is considerable inter-est in the role of incidental vocabulary learning through reading in developing vocabulary knowledge (see Hunt/Beglar 2005; War-ing/Takaki 2003), there is also an awareness that explicit learning of vocabulary may be required, particularly in EFL contexts where expo-sure to the target language may be minimal (Laufer 2001; Laufer/ Paribakht 1998; Webb 2008).

2.1. Incidental learning

Learning new vocabulary through reading is considered one of the primary approaches to enhancing learners’ vocabulary knowledge (Krashen 1989), because reading cultivates L2 learners’ fluency in word recognition (Hulstijn 2001). Krashen (1989) suggests that exten-sive reading is an effective tool for building L2 vocabulary for those learners beyond the basic level. The contextual support provided through reading is seen as significant for second language lexical de-velopment (Rott 2007).

Webb (2009) conducted an experimental study with EFL stu-dents at a Japanese university to compare the effects of more and less informative contexts while reading on vocabulary learning by rating the contexts where target words were encountered. The findings show that the group that read the text with more contextual clues obtained significantly higher scores on the tests of meaning. The quality of the context may have a more positive effect on learning word meaning than the number of encounters with the target words. The results also show that the number of encounters may have a greater effect on knowledge of word form.

Zahar, Cobb, and Spada (2001) also investigated the effect of the degree of contextual richness and the role of word frequency on L2 vocabulary learning through reading with 144 male Grade 7 ESL students at five levels of proficiency in a Montreal French-language high school. The findings show that frequency of meetings of new words while reading may be three to four times more beneficial for weaker learners than for advanced students.


2.2. Explicit instruction

Lee (2003) proposes the hypothesis that systematic and explicit vo-cabulary instruction does not only comprise one specific instruction technique but integrates a number of strategies that lead to depth of word knowledge and enhance word learning, word memory, and word recall for later use. The researcher claims that this systematic instruc-tion model supports teacher-directed interaction and negotiation based on the following psycholinguistic principles of word learning: see the word, hear the word, understand the word, say the word, and use the word in context. Lee’s (2003) study investigates vocabulary use in the writing of 65 secondary school intermediate ESL learners and finds that learners who are taught target words through a combination of tasks use more of those words in a writing task than learners who do not receive vocabulary instruction.

Other studies also support direct vocabulary instruction and confirm it as an efficient and highly effective approach. Zimmerman (1997) reports that interactive vocabulary instruction accompanied by moderate amounts of self-selected and course-related reading results in gains in vocabulary knowledge for ESL post-secondary learners. Carlo et al. (2004) find that pre-learning vocabulary through intensive tasks contributes to reading comprehension for ESL learners. Webb (2009) conducted an empirical study which investigated the effects of pre-learning vocabulary on reading comprehension and writing with Japanese university students. The findings suggest that pre-learning vocabulary may be an effective method of improving L2 learners’ reading comprehension and writing ability. The learners’ ability to use or understand new lexical items was also increased.

3. Interfaces between receptive and productive tasks

Morris, Bransford, and Franks’ (1977) transfer-appropriate processing theory indicates that the similarity between the learning conditions


and the test may affect learning outcome. The type of task in L2 vo-cabulary instruction practice – receptive or productive – thus may influence students’ language performance in various aspects. While a number of researchers suggest that the majority of vocabulary is ob-tained receptively through reading or listening (see Jenkins/Stein/ Wysocki 1984; Nagy/Anderson/Herman 1987), Webb (2005) claims that L2 vocabulary learning is also likely to be receptive when words are taught in the classroom, because teachers are more likely to tell the meaning of a word (e.g. L1 and L2 word pairs; L1 translation), the pronunciation of a word, and the orthography of a word than to ask students to use the word.

Hill and Laufer (2003) show that post-reading tasks explicitly concentrating on target words may result in better vocabulary learning than comprehension questions which draw on knowledge of the target words’ meaning, while Min (2008) compares the effectiveness of nar-row reading (NR) and reading plus vocabulary-enhancement activities (RV) and shows that the RV students had better vocabulary gains and retention after completing a variety of receptive and productive vo-cabulary exercises than NR students.

Studies have focused specifically on vocabulary use in writing tasks (see Lee 2003; Lee/Muncie 2006). A concern with regard to students’ writings seems to be the ‘quality’ of learners’ vocabulary use (Laufer 1994). Laufer and Goldstein’s (2004) study confirms learners’ difficulties in producing vocabulary, and suggests that active recall of target words is demanding. Target vocabulary instruction such as teacher elicitation, explicit explanation and multimode exposure to target vocabulary may enhance learners’ productive vocabulary use in writing contexts (Lee/Muncie 2006).

In addition, Snellings, van Gelderen, and de Glopper (2004) provide evidence that learners who receive direct instruction use more target words than students who do not receive training of these words. In their study, training involved movement from receptive skills to productive skills through use of four types of activities. Lee and Mun-cie’s (2006) study shows that the learners’ productive use of higher level target words improved in post-reading composition and was largely sustained in a delayed writing task.


4. The current study

There is mounting evidence that L2 lexical development plays an im-portant role in successful second and foreign language acquisition. The important role of vocabulary instruction in L2 vocabulary learn-ing and retention has been highlighted in studies adopting a receptive perspective (Rott 2007; Webb 2008; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001; Zim-merman 1997), a productive perspective (Hill/Laufer 2003; Laufer 2001; Min 2008), and a combined receptive-productive perspective (Lee 2003; Lee/Muncie 2006; Snellings/van Gelderen/Glopper 2004).

To date, Lee and Muncie (2006) is the only known study to ex-amine: (1) the relationship between the learners’ vocabulary input (reading) and output (writing); and (2) the effects of explicit instruc-tion on learners’ productive use of vocabulary. The present study seeks to provide a better understanding of the combined effects of reading and vocabulary instruction on L2 learners’ productive use in writing, with a specific focus on academic vocabulary. The research question is:

What is the effect of reading exposure (i.e. incidental learning) and vocabulary instruction (i.e. explicit instruction) on productive use of target vocabulary in writing?

4.1. Participants

The participants are 142 second-year non-English-major undergradu-ates from four English Writing II classes at a university in northern Taiwan. The age of the participants is 19 to 20 years old. Their first language is Mandarin and the medium of instruction for their major subjects (e.g. industrial engineering, chemistry) is Mandarin. English is considered a foreign language in Taiwan, an EFL setting, where students have little opportunity to use English for communication outside the classroom. Students in Taiwan officially start to learn Eng-lish at the first year of junior high school; thus the participants had


studied English for a minimum of seven years. Their English profi-ciency was an intermediate level based on the General English Profi-ciency Test (GEPT). The GEPT was developed in 1999, commis-sioned by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, in order to provide individuals with a gauge of their English language proficiency (Ro-ever/Pan 2008).

4.2. Target words

15 target words selected from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Cox-head 2000) and occurring in a selected reading text, ‘Green Architec-ture’ (EZ TALK Magazine 2010), were used in the study. The AWL consists of 570 word families, and is divided by Coxhead into catego-ries ranging from the most frequent, Sublist 1, to the least frequent, Sublist 10, based on the frequency of occurrence in Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Corpus. The target lexical items came from six different sublists of the AWL as follows:

Sublist 1 – create, finance Sublist 2 – construct, impact, maintain, resource, survey, tradition Sublist 3 – dominate, layer, technology Sublist 4 – project Sublist 5 – energy, generate Sublist 7 – foundation

The rationale for choosing academic vocabulary is that L2 teachers assess students’ writing partly based on the quality of their vocabulary use (Nation 2001). This includes their use of academic and technical vocabulary. Academic vocabulary is particularly valuable for students who are preparing for academic written tasks (Paltridge et al. 2009). Learning academic words for university students is imperative be-cause (1) the students are more often familiar with technical vocabu-lary in their study fields than academic vocabulary (Coxhead 2000), and (2) because academic vocabulary often collocates with technical words (Worthington/Nation 1996; Xue/Nation 1984).


4.3. Receptive and productive tests

The study employed receptive and productive vocabulary tests to compare students’ vocabulary knowledge of the 15 target words. Both tests consisted of the same 15 target lexical items. A vocabulary re-ceptive test was designed by the research team and required the par-ticipants to select the correct words to match 15 target definitions. The definitions were adopted from the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (Walter 2005). The total 21 lexical items, including 15 target items and six distractor items, were listed at the top of the test paper. All distractor words also came from the AWL (Coxhead 2000), such as ‘schedule’, ‘method’ and ‘psychology’. The vocabulary pro-ductive test was a revised version of the controlled productive vocabu-lary test (Laufer/Nation 1999). In Laufer and Nation’s design, initial letters of a target word were provided as a cue to help students com-plete a sentence by recalling the word. An example using ‘bicycle’ is: ‘He was riding a bic______’ (Laufer/Nation 1999: 46). In the present study, both initial and final letters of a target word were provided to help participants produce the correct word form and part of speech towards its definition.

The scoring criteria of the vocabulary tests were that one point was awarded for each correct item in the receptive test, while two points were awarded for each correct spelling and one point for each minor incorrect spelling in the productive test. For example, for the target word create, one point is awarded for students producing words such as crete*, crate* or craete*. The incorrect form of creat* was not likely to be produced since the final letter of the word was provided on the test.

4.4. Experimental instruments

4.4.1. Reading text

The reading text entitled ‘Green Architecture’ was adopted from EZ TALK Magazine, Issue 131 (2010). It is a 502-word passage which consists of 393 K1 words (1-1000 level), 33 K2 words (1001-2000 level), 30 AWL words (academic vocabulary) and 46 off-listed words


(technical, low frequency, proper nouns) based on the online analysis of the Compleat Lexical Tutor (Cobb 2010). Simple L1 glosses of the target words were provided by the research team. The reading activity was designed to enable students to learn lexical items incidentally and obtain general background knowledge relevant to the subsequent writ-ing task (see Appendix 1).

4.4.2. Writing frame

The writing frame, adapted from Lee and Muncie (2006), was de-signed to assist students to concentrate on recalling and producing newly learned words (see Appendix 2). The task required participants to write 200-250 words on the topic ‘My Ideal Green Architecture (Building)’ with guiding questions and instructions to utilise the target words. The scoring criteria of the writing task were adapted from Lee (2003). Lee employed Laufer’s (1990, 1994) and Nation’s (1990) taxonomy of components of knowing a word. A target word thus was scored as correctly used if it was correct in meaning, spelling and part of speech. A target word that was correctly used more than once was counted once. A target word that was used more than once and was correctly used at least once was counted once. Grammatical errors that did not affect the meaning of the lexical item were not counted as errors. For each target word that was correctly used in terms of mean-ing, spelling and part of speech, the student was awarded three points, one for each component.

Any lexical item that had achieved three points was counted as ‘fully produced’ while a score of one or two was counted as ‘partially produced’ based on Barcroft’s (2008) study. For example, in the sen-tence ‘Green buildings can save energy’, three points are awarded for the word ‘energy’ because of the correct usage of its meaning, spelling and part of speech.

4.5. Procedure

Data were collected by two experienced English teachers in the par-ticipating university who administered the vocabulary tests, the treat-


ments and the writing tasks. The study was conducted during April, 2010. On the treatment day, students came to the university at the time of their usual English class. The four classes were randomly assigned to be experiment group 1 (E1) (vocabulary instruction), experiment group 2 (E2) (reading), experiment group 3 (E3) (vocabulary instruc-tion plus reading) and the control group (C) (no treatment).

The vocabulary receptive test and the productive test were ad-ministered to identify the degree of uniformity across the four treat-ment groups with regard to prior knowledge of the target words. The receptive vocabulary test was collected from the students prior to dis-tributing the productive vocabulary test. This was to remove the pos-sibility of students looking for productive test answers in the receptive test. The participants were given ten minutes for each vocabulary test. The results of the vocabulary tests were not returned to the students until the end of the study.

For group E1 (vocabulary instruction), after the vocabulary tests, the teacher taught and explained the 15 target words, focusing on word meaning, word form, L1 translation, collocations, stressed syllable, pronunciation and usage. PowerPoint slides were used. A sample slide using the word ‘construct’ was:

to construct [v] Green architecture is a popular way to construct new buildings. construction [n] The building is a construction of wood. The new school is still under construction.

For group E2 (reading), after the vocabulary tests, the students read the passage entitled ‘Green Architecture’. The teacher then read the passage aloud to the class, pausing at appropriate points while requir-ing the participants to repeat the sections they had heard. Following this, the participants were required to read aloud in pairs to ensure that every student had the opportunity to read the passage aloud. Finally, the students were given ten minutes for silent reading; meanwhile, they were instructed to focus on the 15 underlined target words which


related to their subsequent writing tasks. For group E3 (vocabulary instruction plus reading), students received the same vocabulary in-struction as E1 and then the same procedure as E2. For the control group (no treatment), the students were not pre-taught the target vo-cabulary or provided with the reading passage.

Finally, a writing task was administered immediately after the treatment for all groups. All participants were instructed to recall as many target words as they could and write them in the margin of their paper prior to writing compositions. They were instructed to write about 200-250 words on the topic ‘My ideal green architecture’ within 50 minutes. They were instructed to use the frame as a guide and use any target words they wished. The data collection procedure for each group is summarised as below with the treatments highlighted: Group 1: receptive + productive test > vocabulary instruction > writing task Group 2: receptive + productive test > reading > writing task Group 3: receptive + productive test > vocabulary instruction + reading > writing task Control group: receptive + productive test > writing task

4.6. Data analysis

The scores obtained for each treatment condition were analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 17.0 (SPSS 17.0). The probability coefficient (p), which can range from 0 to +1, measures significance, and a significance level was set to be 0.05 in order to reject a null hypothesis in the data (Dörnyei 2007). The re-sults in this study were assumed to be statistically significant and indi-cated an effect on the population when p < 0.05 (Field 2009).

4.6.1. Inter-rater reliability test

The productive vocabulary test and writing task were scored sepa-rately by the researcher and an independent evaluator, a fellow MEd TESOL student, trained in the use of the scoring protocol. Scoring discrepancies were discussed between the researcher and the inde-pendent evaluator until consensus was reached. To show the degree of


agreement among raters, inter-rater reliability using Pearson’s r was calculated. Pearson’s r obtained was .99 for the productive vocabulary test and .96 for the writing task, indicating a high degree of agreement between the two raters.

4.6.2. Descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics describe general tendencies indicated by the data and the overall distribution of the scores; descriptive statistics usually provide the mean (M) which is the average of the scores; the standard deviation (SD), which is an indicator of the average distance of the scores from the mean; and the number of participants (N) (Dörnyei 2007). In the present study, descriptive statistics were applied to summarise the mean scores obtained by the four treatment conditions. The standard deviation was calculated in order to understand how scores were distributed around the means. These index values were used to compare the effectiveness of two lexical learning approaches – incidental learning and explicit teaching – with regard to productive use of target words in writing.

4.6.3. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)

One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to compare four treatment conditions. The independent variable was ‘class group’ with four values (E1, E2, E3 and Control) representing four classes; the dependent variable was the scores from the writing task. ANOVA generates multiple comparisons, in which F values are computed and checked for significance as the first step; the second step is to deter-mine which contrasts are significant by computing a post-hoc test (Dörnyei 2007).

In the present study, the LSD post-hoc test was conducted when the initial F value for the ANOVA was significant. To sum up, in the present study, one-way ANOVA indicates whether or not the four treatment conditions differ statistically.


4.6.4. Effect size

Effect size represents whether an observed difference is substantively or practically significant. This practical difference is in contrast to a statistical significance because the fact that a test statistic is significant does not imply that the effect it measures is meaningful or important (Field 2009). In other words, the measure of effect size provides an indication of the strength of one’s findings, which helps to confirm whether a statistically significant difference is also a difference of practical concern (Mackey/Gass 2005). The effect size indicates the proportion of overlap of two groups with each other (Salkind 2008). In the present study, effect size was calculated by adopting Cohen’s d, using the means and standard deviations of two groups (Cohen 1992). Cohen’s d indicated the effect size for each vocabulary learning treat-ment, namely vocabulary instruction, reading, vocabulary instruction plus reading, and no treatment. A correlation coefficient (r) of 0 means no effect, and a value of 1 means a perfect effect (Field 2009). Cohen (1992) suggested that an effect size (r) of .2 is considered small, an effect size (r) of .5 is considered medium, and an effect size (r) of .8 is considered large.

5. Results

In order to measure the degree of uniformity across the four treatment groups of prior familiarity with the 15 target words, the participants’ scores on receptive and productive vocabulary tests were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicate mean scores for the receptive vocabulary test of 7.03 (E1), 8.30 (E2), 7.24 (E3) and 7.09 (control). The statistical significance for these results was measured at the .05 level at F (3, 138) = 1.375, p = .253. The results indicate mean scores for the productive vocabulary test of 9.53 (E1), 10.68 (E2), 9.36 (E3) and 8.71 (control). The statistical signifi-cance for these results was measured at the .05 level at F (3, 138) = 1.697, p = .170. Statistical significance is measured by a probability


coefficient (p). In social sciences, the result is considered significant if p < .05. The results from the values of p indicate that the differences between the means across the four groups for both the receptive test and the productive test are not significant. This suggests that the par-ticipants’ average prior familiarity of the target words is reasonably similar across the four treatment groups.

5.1. Reliability of the target lexical items

Reliability is ‘[t]he proportion of variance in a measure that can be ascribed to a true score’ (de Vellis 2005: 317). Mackey and Gass (2005) state that reliability is the consistency of a test or a score. Cronbach’s Alpha is a measure of internal consistency and reliability. Values for Cronbach’s Alpha range between 0 and +1, and internal consistency estimates for a well-developed test should approach 0.80 (Dörnyei 2007). The reliability analysis for the current study indicates acceptable reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha = .76) for the 15 target words in both receptive and productive tests.

5.2. Tests of normality

Prior to running the statistical analysis, the normality of the data was assessed by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Results from the test show that most raw data met the assumption of normality (p < .05) and performed normal distribution. According to Dörnyei (2007: 208), “normality does not have to be perfect because most procedures work well with data that is only approximately normally distributed”. Some formal kinds of normality tests suffer from low power, which means we cannot always accurately detect whether data are normally distrib-uted or not (Wilcox 2003).

One solution appears to be “[soldiering] on pretty much just as-suming that our data are normally distributed unless we find strong and clear evidence to the contrary” in the ‘classical’ types of statistical tests (Larson-Hall 2010: 74). In this sense, most data could be as-sumed to work well in the following statistical analysis procedures.


As can be seen in Table 1, data from the receptive test were normally distributed in E2 (.036) and E3 (.000), but not in E1 (.200) and the control group (.200). Data from the productive test were nor-mally distributed in E2 (.029) and E3 (.000), near normal in the con-trol group (.066), but not normal in E1 (.099). Data from partially produced words in the writing task were normally distributed in all groups (E1 = .008; E2 = .000; E3 = .001; Control = .000). Data from fully produced words in the writing task were normally distributed in E3 (.001) and the control group (.000), but were not in E1 (.200) and E2 (.185). Table 1. Test of Normality (Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test).

Statistic Df Sig. E1 Receptive Test .105 38 .200 (N = 38) Productive Test .131 38 .099 Partially Produced .169 38 .008* Fully Produced .116 38 .200 E2 Receptive Test .149 37 .036* (N = 37) Productive Test .153 37 .029* Partially Produced .229 37 .000* Fully Produced .121 37 .185 E3 Receptive Test .245 33 .000* (N = 33) Productive Test .217 33 .000* Partially Produced .211 33 .001* Fully Produced .214 33 .001* Control Receptive Test .120 34 .200 (N = 34) Productive Test .145 34 .066 Partially Produced .538 34 .000* Fully Produced .538 34 .000*

Note: * = normally distributed

5.3. Descriptive statistics

The descriptive statistics for the students’ use of target words in the writing task is shown in Table 2. The mean scores (M) and standard


deviations (SD) of the four vocabulary learning conditions (i.e. vo-cabulary instruction, reading, vocabulary instruction plus reading, and no treatment) are provided. The mean indicates the average value (the number of target words used in writing) for different vocabulary learn-ing conditions.

The descriptive statistics indicate that the means for vocabulary instruction, reading, and vocabulary instruction plus reading were higher than the mean for the control group which received no treat-ment. Table 2. Descriptive statistics for use of new words in writing.

Condition New learned word N Mean* SD Ratio (P:F)**

E1 (vocabulary instruction)

Partial knowledge 38 1.73 1.54 (1.2.0) Full knowledge 3.53 1.81 Overall 5.26 2.5

E2 (reading) Partial knowledge 37 1.08 1.16 (1:2.9) Full knowledge 3.14 2 Overall 4.22 2.64 E3 (vocabulary instruction + reading)

Partial knowledge 33 1.15 1.12 (1:2.3) Full knowledge 2.64 1.06 Overall 3.79 1.14

Control (no treat-ment)

Partial knowledge 34 0.06 0.24 (1:1) Full knowledge 0.06 0.24 Overall 0.12 0.33

Total N=142; 95% confidence interval for mean; *minimum mean=0/maximum mean=15 **(P:F) = (Partial knowledge: Full knowledge) Table 2 shows that the mean score was highest for the group receiving vocabulary instruction (E1, M=5.26). The group receiving reading treatment (E2) was next highest (M=4.22), followed by the group receiving both vocabulary instruction and reading (E3, M=3.79). The control group received the lowest score (M=.12). The SD relative to the means in each group suggests that the participants’ performance in productive use of target words in writing is wide ranging (0.33 to 2.64). The mean scores for partially produced and fully produced tar-get words in writing for the four treatments are also presented in Table 2. In terms of partially produced words, the score of the group that


received vocabulary instruction was the highest (M=1.73); the second highest score was achieved by the group that received the vocabulary instruction plus reading (M=1.15); the reading group achieved the third highest (M=1.08), and the control group with no treatment re-ceived the lowest score (M=.06).

With regard to fully produced target words, the score of the group that received vocabulary instruction remained the highest (M=3.53), whereas the reading group received the second highest score (M=3.14) and the vocabulary instruction plus reading group dropped to third highest (M=2.64). The ranges of SD in the partially and fully produced target words were from .24 to 1.54 and .24 to 2.00, respectively. The mean scores for the group with the treatment of vo-cabulary instruction (E1) were higher than the other three groups for both partially and fully produced words. In addition, ratios between partially and fully produced target words in writing were calculated and these are reported in Table 2. The ratios between partially and fully produced words are 1:2 (E1), 1:2.9 (E2), 1:2.3 (E3) and 1:1 (con-trol group). The results suggest that students appear to be more likely to use a target word correctly (i.e. fully produced) in writing for treat-ment groups E1, E2, E3, but not for the control group.

Table 3 presents data on spelling, meaning and part of speech for students’ partially produced target words in their writing, based on Lee’s (2003) classification of correct word use. For spelling, the mean score was highest for the group that received vocabulary instruction (E1) (.66), the vocabulary instruction plus reading group (E3) received the second highest score (.52), and the reading group (E2) was the third highest (.38). In terms of knowing a word’s meaning and part of speech, the mean scores were the highest in vocabulary instruction group (E1) (1.13, 1.24), the reading group (E2) came the second (.84, .87), and the vocabulary instruction plus reading group (E3) was the third (.76, .82). The control group received the lowest score for each part of partially produced target words; the means were .00 for spell-ing, .06 for meaning, and .29 for part of speech.


Table 3. Descriptive statistics for use of partially learned words in writing.

Condition N Spelling Meaning Part of speech M* SD M* SD M* SD

E1 38 .66 .94 1.13 1.12 1.24 1.38 E2 37 .38 .64 .84 .99 .87 .98 E3 33 .52 .83 .76 .87 .82 .98 Control 34 .00 .00 .06 .24 .29 .17 Total 142 .39 .74 .71 .96 .75 1.08

95% confidence interval for mean; * minimum of mean=0/maximum of mean=15

5.4. One-way ANOVA

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicates that there was a significant difference in students’ productive use of target words in writ-ing amongst the E1 (M = 5.26, SD = 2.50), E2 (M = 4.22, SD = 2.64), E3 (M = 3.79, SD = 1.41), and control group (M= .12, SD =.33) at the .05 level: F (3, 138) = 44.249, p < .001. The difference in students’ use of partially produced words in writing was significant among the four groups at the .05 level; E1 (M = 1.74, SD = 1.54), E2 (M = 1.08, SD = 1.17), E3 (M = 1.15, SD = 1.12), and control group (M = .06, SD = .24), F (3, 138) = 13.326, p < .001. The difference in students’ use of fully produced words in writing was also significant at the .05 level amongst E1 (M = 3.53, SD = 1.81), E2 (M = 3.14, SD = 2.00), E3 (M = 2.64, SD = 1.06), and control group (M = .06, SD = .24), F (3, 138) = 38.883, p < .001. The initial F values for the ANOVA were all significant.

5.5. The LSD Post Hoc Test

Table 4 shows multiple comparisons between the effectiveness of various treatments on productive use of target words in writing by using the LSD post-hoc test. The mean difference is significant at the .05 level. The results indicate that the mean difference between E1 and E2 was 1.05, p = .025; the mean difference between E1 and E3 was 1.48, p = .002; and the mean difference between E1 and the control group was 5.15, p = .000. This may suggest that students in group E1


who received vocabulary instruction performed significantly better in terms of using target words in the subsequent writing task than stu-dents in the E2 group who received the reading passage, E3 who re-ceived both vocabulary instruction and the reading passage, and stu-dents in the control group who did not receive any treatment, p < .05. Table 4. Multiple comparisons between treatments (LSD Post Hoc Test).

E1: vocabulary instruction

E2: Reading E3: vocabulary instruction + reading

E2 MD = 1.05* E3 MD = 1.48* MD = .43 Control MD = 5.15* MD = 4.10* MD = 3.67*

*mean difference significant at .05 level; minimum of mean=0/maximum of mean=15 In addition, students in group E2 who received the reading passage per-formed significantly better than students in the control group – the mean difference between E2 and the control group was 4.10, p = .000, p < .05. Group E2 did not differ from group E3 significantly – the mean difference between E2 and E3 was .43, p = .371, p > .05. The students in group E3 who received both vocabulary instruction and the reading passage per-formed significantly better than students in the control group – the mean difference between E3 and the control group was 3.67, p = .000, p < .05.

The results suggest that both vocabulary instruction and reading had a positive effect on the participants’ productive vocabulary use in writing. Vocabulary instruction plus reading, however, was not sig-nificantly better than the reading only treatment in terms of students’ productive use of target words in the writing task.

5.6. Effect size

Cohen’s d was calculated to indicate the effect size for each vocabulary learning treatment, namely vocabulary instruction, reading, vocabulary instruction plus reading, and no treatment. Effect size informs the de-gree of the association strength between two groups of mean scores (Kirk 1996). Cohen (1992) suggests that an effect size (r) of .2 is con-sidered small, an effect size (r) of .5 is considered medium, and an ef-


fect size (r) of .8 is considered large. As can be seen in Table 5, the vocabulary learning approaches of vocabulary instruction, reading, and vocabulary instruction plus reading were shown to have a moderate effect on students’ productive use of new learned words in their writing. The calculated effect sizes were .60 for vocabulary instruction, .52 for reading, and .56 for vocabulary instruction plus reading. Table 5. Effect sizes with different vocabulary learning approaches.

Contrast Effect size (r) E1 versus E2 0.24 E1 versus E3 0.21 E2 versus E3 0.03 E1 versus Control 0.6 E2 versus Control 0.52 E3 versus Control 0.56

Table 6 presents the comparisons of students’ use of fully produced and partially produced target words in writing with regard to each treatment. The effect sizes were calculated as .47 for E1, .53 for E2, and .56 for E3, which are considered medium. Table 6. Effect sizes of fully and partially produced target word in writing.

Contrast Effect size (r) of fully and partially produced target words in writing

E1 (vocabulary instruction) 0.47 E2 (reading) 0.53 E3 (vocabulary instruction + reading) 0.56 E4 (no treatment) 0.00

6. Discussion

This study aimed to investigate the effects of incidental learning and explicit instruction on EFL learners’ productive use of 15 target aca-demic words in their writing. Many studies, including the present


study, show that both learning approaches are beneficial in terms of increasing students’ use of target words (see e.g. Webb 2008; Za-har/Cobb/Spada 2001; Zimmerman 1997). The results of the present study indicate that the students in experimental groups had signifi-cantly better vocabulary gain scores than the students in the control group who did not receive a treatment. The results support evidence in the literature that L2 learners may incidentally improve uptake of ‘new’ words in writing through reading (Nagy/Anderson/Herman 1987; Webb 2008; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001) and through explicit vo-cabulary instruction (Lee 2003; Lee/Muncie 2006; Snellings/van Gelderen/de Glopper 2004; Webb 2009).

Another finding of the present study is that explicit instruction appeared more beneficial for learners’ productive use of target vo-cabulary than reading (M = 5.26 for vocabulary instruction; M = 4.22 for reading). Studies which have compared the effects of reading only and combined reading and vocabulary instruction learning (see e.g. Lee 2003; Lee/Muncie 2006; Zimmerman 1997) support the findings of the current study that specific vocabulary instruction contributes more to learners’ use of target vocabulary in writing than reading. Lee and Muncie (2006) attribute the learners’ improvement in using more target words in writing to the teacher’s use of interactive elicitation of vocabulary during instruction, which was absent in the reading activ-ity. Lee (2003) also reports that use of newly learned productive vo-cabulary increased significantly in an immediate writing task after vocabulary instruction.

Laufer and Shmueli (1997) claim that incidental vocabulary ac-quisition will hardly occur if unknown words are not noticed or not processed deeply; thus, the way new vocabulary is presented to learn-ers is critical. They also indicate that focus-oriented methods of pre-senting new vocabulary are more effective than context-oriented read-ing methods. Their result was similar to the finding of the present study that specific vocabulary instruction is more effective than read-ing in terms of students’ productive use of target words.

One further result of the present study is that adding reading to explicit vocabulary instruction does not lead to any improvement, and rather has the opposite effect (M = 5.26 for vocabulary instruction; M = 3.79 for vocabulary instruction plus reading). Lee (2003), who in-


vestigated the combined effects of reading and vocabulary instruction on vocabulary use in writing for secondary ESL learners with multi-grade and multi-L1, found that 13.19% of recognised vocabulary is productive after reading while 63.62% of recognised vocabulary be-comes productive vocabulary after the addition of explicit target vo-cabulary instruction. Lee’s result indicates that combined reading and vocabulary instruction were much more beneficial for these ESL learners’ productive use of target words than reading only.

The result of the present study indicates that combined vocabu-lary instruction and reading is not more beneficial than reading only for students’ productive use of target words. This differs from Lee and Muncie’s (2006) study which explored the effects of a reading lesson and teacher-fronted elicitation of target words on ESL learners’ use of vocabulary in writing. They report that encountering new words in reading is insufficient for them to become productive. The proportion of target word families used in the first writing task (after reading) was less than 6%, but significantly increased in the second writing task (after vocabulary instruction) and a delayed writing task which took place two weeks later. The researchers claim that reading only does not ensure that students’ recognition vocabulary or newly learned words will become productive vocabulary when students write about the same topic as the reading, whereas they suggest that integrating reading and direct vocabulary learning makes vocabulary learning durable and improves writing quality.

6.1. Partially and fully produced target words

The present study reveals that students in the three experimental groups were more likely to use words in writing correctly (i.e. fully produced) than with errors (i.e. partially produced). The results indi-cate that the participants who received vocabulary instruction used twice as many words correctly than partially incorrectly (ratio 2 to 1); those who received a reading passage used nearly three times as many words correctly than partially incorrectly (ratio 2.9 to 1.0), and stu-dents who received vocabulary instruction plus a reading passage used more than twice as words correctly than partially incorrectly (ratio 2.3


to 1.0). This result suggests that both vocabulary instruction and read-ing contribute to correct use of words productively in a subsequent writing task.

It can be assumed that vocabulary instruction increases spelling knowledge more than reading passage does, in terms of students’ pro-ductive use of partial lexical knowledge (see Table 3; mean scores for spelling, .66 for vocabulary instruction, .38 for reading, and .52 for vocabulary instruction plus reading). Repeated exposures to new words in meaningful contexts can be considered effective in terms of initial recognition. However, explicit vocabulary teaching may be more ef-fective than reading at drawing students’ attention to the word form, and correct knowledge of word form may result in improved recall and productive use of words.

The processes of transferring receptively known words to pro-ductive use can be viewed as moving between two points on the same vocabulary learning continuum (Coady 1997). The Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Paribakht/Wesche 1993) provides a repre-sentation of this idea. The main purpose of the VKS is to assess a per-son’s vocabulary knowledge, from receptive to productive. The VKS has five levels of vocabulary knowledge which indicate progressive degrees of word knowledge.

I. I don’t remember having seen this word before. II. I have seen this word before but I don’t know what it means. III. I have seen this word before and I think it means ________. (synonym

or translation) IV. I know this word. It means __________. (synonym or translation) V. I can use this word in a sentence. e.g.: ___________________. (If you

do this section, please also do section IV.) Figure 1. Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (Paribakht/Wesche 1993: 15). As can be seen in Figure 1, Level I reflects that the subject does not know the word. Levels II, III and IV represent recognition of vocabu-lary, while Level V refers to productive knowledge. It is still unclear what mental devices L2 learners use to transform their receptive word knowledge into full productive use. The mental device perhaps lies in


the learners’ long-term memory. Identifying the triggers for the initial process of transfer is an area for future research.

6.2. Implications for teaching and learning

In many EFL settings, students have little opportunity to use English for communication outside the language classroom. In the classroom, vocabulary learning has been described as a complicated process (Schneider/Healy/Bourne 2002), with evidence that a limited vocabu-lary acts as a constraint on the quality of academic written discourse (Shaw 1991). Enhancing L2 learners’ ability to correctly produce newly acquired words in writing seems like a worthy cause. The pre-sent study suggests that both explicit vocabulary instruction and read-ing are beneficial for enhancing productive use of target words.

The effectiveness of L2 vocabulary acquisition from incidental exposure in reading is confirmed in the present study and the previous literature (e.g. Hulstijn 2001; Webb 2008; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001); however, not all learners are equally successful in lexical learning during pure reading. L2 teachers should not expect vocabulary learn-ing to be a by-product of limited quantities of reading, particularly in a foreign language learning situation. Rather, apart from purely contex-tualised learning, teachers should devote themselves to creating vari-ous types of learning tasks with different levels of involvement load and which are also accompanied by reading.

This is because encouraging learning through meaningful tasks may enhance learners’ ability for deep processing. In classroom con-texts, vocabulary learning tasks can be designed using any approaches where the involvement load (see Hulstijn/Laufer 2001) is identical for all the target words to be learnt (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001). L2 teachers’ elaborately designed tasks with various involvement loads that meet the learners’ needs and proficiency level can serve as instruments to promote students’ productive use of vocabulary.

In terms of giving vocabulary instruction, the learners’ lexical knowledge level and learning needs should be taken into account by teachers. The first priority in direct vocabulary teaching for L2 teach-ers should be to concentrate on which words are to be studied. Ac-


cording to Read (2004), there is an advantage for learners and teachers of English to focus initially on the 2,000 most frequently occurring words, because these words are fundamental and have been repeatedly shown to be responsible for at least 80% of the running words in any written or spoken text. While the learners’ lexical knowledge moves beyond the first 2,000 word families, there is a need to select aca-demic vocabulary (Coxhead 2000) that occurs frequently across a range of academic texts. This is particularly important for university students. For example, academic words were selected as target vo-cabulary for the present study, which was aimed to meet the partici-pants’ academic needs and their English proficiency level.

6.2.1. Receptive – productive

Transferring receptive vocabulary to productive vocabulary is the final stage of vocabulary learning (Brown/Payne 1994). Writing new words in context may be an effective approach to enhancing learners’ confi-dence in later use of these words, and may contribute to both receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition. In order to promote L2 learn-ers’ productive use of vocabulary, teachers may integrate vocabulary teaching and reading tasks into writing contexts (such as occurred in the present study), with attention to vocabulary use, since writing al-lows for greater opportunities for productive use of new words than speaking does (Muncie 2002). In many cases, writing provides extra time which enables L2 learners to activate less frequent but more ap-propriate words, and these words are usually in learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge but not yet fully part of their productive vo-cabulary (Corson 1997). As a result, L2 teachers may manipulate a combination of receptive and productive tasks to foster students’ lexi-cal competence and general language skills, because receptive vocabu-lary learning appears to gain more comprehension, while productive vocabulary learning enables students to employ greater numbers of taught words in their writing (Webb 2009).


6.3. Implications for future research

The present study appears to be the only study of its kind to show that direct vocabulary instruction is more effective than reading activities in promoting new vocabulary use in writing. Useful future research could examine this relationship in various second language learning contexts, such as ESL/EFL, or with different age groups. The present study also shows that participants were more likely to use target words correctly in writing than partially correct. There is a lack of similar studies in this area. Hence, future studies may seek to investigate fur-ther the behaviour of learners with regard to productive use of par-tially and fully learned words.

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Appendix 1: Reading text (first paragraph only shown)

Please read the following text ‘Green Architecture’ and pay atten-tion to underlined words. You have 10 minutes.

With all the bad news about the environment these days, green archi-tecture is becoming an increasingly popular way to construct new buildings. The goal of green architecture is to build offices and homes that use less energy, need less maintenance, and have less impact on their natural surroundings. Green buildings are also designed to be healthier and more pleasing to the eye. So how can you tell if a build-ing is green? If it’s muggy without air conditioning and dark without artificial lighting, then it’s a traditional non-green building. A green building, on the other hand, is comfortable by day even without elec-tricity because insulation and ventilation keep the temperature just right, while its larger windows let in lots of sunlight …. Source: EZ TALK Magazine, Issue 131 (2010, 68-73).

Glossary

to construct [v] energy [n] maintenance [n] impact [n] traditional [a] resources [n] to generate [v]

technology [n] to construct [v] energy [n] maintenance [n] impact [n] traditional [a] to construct [v]

energy [n] maintenance [n] impact [n] traditional [a] resources [n] to generate [v] technology [n] project [n] layer [n] financial [a] to dominate [v]

to create [v] foundation [n] survey [n]


Appendix 2: Writing frame

Instructions: This is a writing exercise. You have 50 minutes to com-plete the writing task. Please do your best to use the 15 new words in this writing. Answer sheet is provided. Topic: My Ideal Green Architecture (Building) (200-250 words) The following is provided to guide you. Paragraph One What are some envi-ronmental problems happening now? Why?

How can we im-prove our environ-ment based on the problems you men-tion above?

Paragraph Two How will you build your ideal green ar-chitecture? Where?

Describe the func-tions of your ideal green architecture.

Paragraph Three Will the building be for public or per-sonal use?

Give your com-ments and conclu-sion on this topic.

Source: The exercise is adapted from Lee and Muncie (2006).

Section 4 Corpus-based Research

WARREN MATSUOKA

Searching for the Right Words: Creating Word Lists to Inform EFL Learning

1. Introduction

Although many English as a foreign language (EFL) students have studied the target language for at least six years as a core subject in their secondary and even primary education years, a substantial pro-portion upon commencing their tertiary studies still find themselves struggling with reading academic texts in English due to their lack of vocabulary knowledge. Second language (L2) studies (Hui 2004; Joyce 2003; Li 2008; Nurweni/Read 1999; Ward 2009a) have consis-tently shown EFL university students’ vocabulary knowledge falls short of the vocabulary size needed to not only comprehend written academic texts but also successfully guess the meanings of unknown words in the texts.

The reason for this difficulty in comprehending texts at the ter-tiary level may not only be due to the students’ small vocabulary size but also specifically to the types of words they had been exposed to and learned through written texts such as their primary and secondary English language teaching (ELT) school textbooks. In other words, the problem may be a matter not only of not knowing enough words but also of not knowing enough of the ‘right’ or most useful words. But what words exactly should the university-bound L2 learner be taught or exposed to?

In order to identify and create lists of what may be the most useful words for L2 learners, many researchers have taken advantage of the most recent computer technology to create corpora compiled

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from L1 texts such as books, newspapers, journal articles, and tran-scripts of university lectures and business meetings. This chapter in-vestigates the challenges EFL learners face when reading academic texts and signals how their situation may be ameliorated through cor-pus-driven studies that aim to identify which words may give them the highest return for their learning. An overview will be given of: 1) the literature of the existing research on vocabulary knowledge and read-ing comprehension including factors involved in vocabulary acquisi-tion such as vocabulary size, text coverage, and word repetition and 2) the methodology and results of previous studies that generated word lists manually or using computer programs for the purpose of identify-ing the words that may be the most useful for and worthy of study by English language learners. Lastly, possible uses of word lists in the English language learning classroom will be discussed.

2. Vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension

Findings from both first language (L1) (see Coleman 1971; Davis 1968; Thorndike 1973) and second language (L2) (see Coady et al. 1993; Koda 1989; Laufer 1991) acquisition research have demon-strated consistently that, although reading comprehension is affected by multiple factors such as the reader’s background knowledge of a text as well as knowledge of general reading strategies (e.g. predicting text content, recognizing the text type and structure, making infer-ences) and how to apply them, it is more strongly related to vocabu-lary knowledge than to any other components of reading.

For example, according to a survey of L1 acquisition research (Anderson/Freebody 1981), various studies have shown that, com-pared to the sentence variable and the abilities to infer and grasp main ideas, the word variable is most highly predictive of comprehension. L2 studies have also found vocabulary to be a good predictor of suc-cessful reading. For example, significant correlations were found be-tween vocabulary tests and reading scores of L2 learners by Laufer

Searching for the Right Words 153

(1991) and even higher correlations were revealed between vocabu-lary and two reading measures in a study by Koda (1989). Coady et al. (1993) found an increase in L2 reading proficiency can be attributed to increased proficiency in vocabulary.

2.1. Vocabulary size and successful reading

After having established that vocabulary knowledge is the best predic-tor of reading comprehension, the next logical step may be to investi-gate how much vocabulary knowledge (i.e. what vocabulary size) is needed to read successfully or, in other words, how many words a L2 reader needs to know to adequately comprehend unsimplified texts. First, it may be best to ask how many words there are in the English language, and how many of them are known by L1 readers. Based on the word-list frequencies in the American Heritage Word Frequency Book (Carroll/Davies/Richman 1971) and the number of generally used base words found in Webster’s 3rd International Dictionary (Goulden/Nation/Read 1990) as well as the extensive research con-ducted by Nagy and his colleagues (e.g. Nagy 2005; Nagy/Anderson 1984; Stahl/Nagy 2006), there are well over 100,000 words in active use in English (Grabe 2009).

Though individuals will vary in their vocabulary size, it has been widely suggested (Grabe 2009; Nation 2001; Stahl 2005; White/ Graves/Slater 1990) that the vocabulary size of L1 well-educated adults and graduating high-school students may be about 20,000 word families or 70,000 individual words (Folse 2010). Thus, these figures may be a useful upper-limit benchmark for L2 learners who aim to study in English at the tertiary level.

2.2. Vocabulary types

Although this benchmark may seem beyond the reach of many L2 learners especially in EFL contexts where exposure to the target lan-guage is minimal, the 20,000 word families may be studied in man-ageable amounts and at different phases of language learning as well

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as for different purposes. It has also been argued that the L2 learner need not have the same vocabulary size as native speakers but instead aspire to know enough of the ‘right’ words to accomplish the tasks they set out to do (e.g. read news reports, watch a movie, work in a clothing store) (Li/Zhang 2009; Nation/Gu 2007). To aid in the teach-ing and learning of L2 vocabulary at the tertiary level, Coxhead and Nation (2001) divided the vocabulary to be learned into four groups: 1) high frequency words, 2) academic vocabulary, 3) technical vo-cabulary, and 4) low frequency words.

2.2.1. High frequency words

Studies on L2 vocabulary research (e.g. Coxhead 2000; Li/Zhang 2009; Nation 2001; Nation/Newton 1997; O’Keeffe/McCarthy/Carter 2007) generally agree that beginners of English language study should focus on learning high frequency words which consist of approxi-mately 2,000 word families as they provide a coverage of about 80% of the running words in most written texts (and up to 90% of the words in fiction texts) giving the learner a high return for learning a relatively small amount of words. Because of their high coverage of written texts and their small number, high frequency words deserve considerable time and attention in the classroom through direct teach-ing (Nation 1990). The most prominent high frequency word lists in the field of TESOL are West’s (1953) General Service List of English Words (GSL) and the British National Corpus (BNC) 1,000 and 2,000 word lists (see Nation 2004).

2.2.2. Academic vocabulary

For L2 learners who have learned the high frequency words and in-tend to do academic study or read newspapers in English, the study of academic words is essential no matter what subject area (e.g. history, accounting, criminal law, physics) is studied as they provide up to 10% coverage of academic texts making the ‘difference between 80% coverage (one unknown word in every five running words) and 90% coverage (one unknown word in every ten running words)’ (Coxhead/Nation 2001: 252); therefore, academic vocabulary may be described as ‘middle frequency words’ (as opposed to those of high or


low frequency) which occur across texts of various disciplines and are thus non-technical or independent of the subject area being taught (Li/Pemberton 1994; Nation 1990). One of the most recent and exten-sive academic word compilations is the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000) which consists of 570 word families and has been used as a benchmark in the development of EAP (English for Aca-demic Purposes) teaching materials (e.g. Schmitt/Schmitt 2005).

2.2.3. Technical vocabulary

Technical words, which are used within a specialized field and so differ from subject area to subject area, consist of about 1,000 words and typically provide up to 5% coverage (Coxhead/Nation 2001; Nation 2001)1. In universities in China, ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses (e.g. an automobile English course) aim to teach technical words along with words from the AWL to satisfy the par-ticular needs of students (Li/Zhang 2009). According to Strevens (1973) and Flowerdew (1993), because technical words, unlike aca-demic words, are the focus of classroom discussions and are often glossed by the content teacher, ESP students do not see the learning of technical words as problematic. It is with learning academic vocabu-lary that these students seem to have the most problems (Shaw 1991; Thurstun/Candlin 1998). 1 A more recent study by Chung and Nation (2003) found that technical vo-

cabulary made up a higher percentage of an anatomy (31%) and an applied linguistics (21%) text as a significant amount of these words (especially in the applied linguistics text) were found to be high frequency words from the GSL or academic words from the AWL (e.g. anatomy: neck, back, trunk; linguis-tics: content, review, input). Therefore, according to Nation in a more recent article (Nation, 2008), technical vocabulary may ‘range in size from around 1,000 words to 5,000 words’ (p. 10) and may make up at least 20% of most technical texts. However, in his biology lectures corpus of over 104,000 to-kens, Flowerdew (1993) referred to words which were in general usage but which had a special meaning in the field of biology (e.g. wall, concentration, body) not as technical vocabulary but rather as semi- or sub-technical words. In this chapter, high frequency and academic words with sub-technical mean-ings will remain classed as high frequency and academic respectively rather than as wholly technical words as a significant number of these words main-tain similar if not the same meaning in technical texts (Chung/Nation 2003).

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2.2.4. Low frequency words

This fourth group or level of vocabulary consists of all the remaining words in a text. Because low frequency words are usually very narrow in range and low in frequency – occurring less than once in ten billion words of text making the likelihood of meeting a particular low fre-quency word less than once every few years (Carroll et al. 1971) – and because their meaning can usually be guessed from context (Nation/Newton 1997), L2 learners and teachers alike should not spend too much time on them. Typically about 5% of the running words in most texts are considered low frequency (Chung/Nation 2003).

2.3. Text coverage and density

According to Nation (2001), it is useful to understand the importance of text coverage and how it can help us better understand as well as visualize the vocabulary demands of certain texts on the L2 reader. For example, a text coverage of 80% means one in every five tokens is unknown to the reader which is about two unknown words per line if a line contains ten words, while 98% coverage means one in every fifty is unknown (i.e. one unknown word per five lines). It is made appar-ent here how this difference in coverage can affect the ease with which the language learner comprehends and possibly learns from reading a text (see Hu/Nation 2000 for a table of selected text cover-ages from 80 to 99 percent).

2.4. Text coverage needed for general comprehension and transfer of L1 reading strategies

In at least two studies by Laufer (1991, 1992), it was found that in order to allow for general text comprehension as well as the use of L1 reading strategies in L2 reading tasks, knowledge of at least 95% of the words in a text is needed which requires a vocabulary size of about 3,000 of the most frequent word families or about 5,000 lexical items


(i.e. dictionary entries)2. Laufer (1997: 24) states that without reaching this 95% threshold learners will not be able to apply their L1 reading strategies to L2 reading which she explains is why even learners with high academic ability in their L1 cannot read well in their L2 as their L2 word knowledge is below this threshold indicating their reading in L2 will be continuously hampered until they attain a sufficient level of lexical knowledge.

2.5. Text coverage needed for guessing from context

Besides being necessary for minimally adequate comprehension of a text, knowledge of 95% of the vocabulary of a text (about one un-known word in every 20 tokens) is also essential for being able to infer the meanings of unknown words in the text from context (Liu/Nation 1985). Nation (2001) also echoes this claim stating that no more than 5% of the text should be unknown words to ensure that guessing from context and comprehension occur, and no less than 2% unknown to provide enough opportunities to learn new words.

2.6. Repetition and vocabulary learning

Repetition is considered to be one of the major factors involved in the learning of vocabulary. According to Nation (2001), extensive re-search in both L1 and L2 contexts has been done on how words should be repeated so they may be not just simply known but known well enough to make them more readily accessible. Such research has been conducted in three specific areas: 1) the number of repetitions (e.g. Webb 2007); 2) spacing of repetitions (e.g. Dempster 1987); and 2 However, a recent study by Laufer and an associate (Laufer/Ravenhorst-

Kalovski 2010: 26), which “used more rigorous research tools than in earlier studies” (e.g. more updated versions of computer programs, a larger sample of learners), supports the findings of an earlier study by Nation (2006) which found that in order for the L2 reader to reach 95% text coverage, a larger vo-cabulary size of between 4,000 to 5,000 word families as well as guidance from the English language teacher are needed.

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3) types of repetitions (e.g. Joe 1995). Only the first two areas of re-search will be discussed as repetition types may involve processing of word meaning (e.g. noticing, retrieval), an aspect of vocabulary acqui-sition that is beyond the scope of the present chapter.

2.6.1. Number of repetitions

Because so many factors are involved in the learning of new words (e.g. their morphology, the learner’s interest, the availability of con-text clues), there is no set number of repetitions of a word which will guarantee its learning (Huckin/Coady 1999). However, based on re-search that has been done in this area (Nation/Wang 1999; Saragi/ Nation/Meister 1978; Webb 2007), around ten repetitions has been recognized as desirable for the learning of unknown words. It has also been found that single long continuous texts such as novels (see Hirsh/Nation 1992) as well as texts that are separate but related through topic such as news reports on the same event (see Hwang/Nation 1989) provide more repetition of vocabulary than unre-lated texts and thus provide much better conditions for vocabulary acquisition.

2.6.2. Spacing of repetitions: massed vs. spaced repetition

Research in both memory (Baddeley 1990) and L2 vocabulary learn-ing (Bloom/Shuell 1981; Dempster 1987) has found that spaced repe-tition (i.e. the spreading out or ‘spacing’ of repetitions of a word throughout a text) is more conducive to the learning of vocabulary than repetition that is massed (i.e. the concentration of repetitions of a word in only one part of a text).

According to Nation (2001), massed repetition may be defined as giving repeated attention to a word in a continuous period of time, say six minutes, while spaced repetition could be described as giving the same amount of attention to a word but spread over a long period of time. For example, in spaced repetition, a word might be studied for two minutes now, another two minutes ten minutes later, one minute the next day, and finally one minute a week later. The study time of the word in total is still six minutes but the repetitions are spread or ‘spaced’ across a week’s time.


Studies (Anderson/Jordan 1928; Griffin/Harley 1996; Pimsleur 1967) show repetition of new words should occur soon after they are first presented because most forgetting has been found to occur soon after the first exposure of a word. However, the following repetitions should be spaced at increasingly larger intervals as forgetting of sub-sequent repetitions becomes increasingly slower (Pimsleur 1967). Therefore, in contrast to massed repetition of a word, which occurs in only a short span of time, spaced repetition may lead to learning that will be retained in the learner’s memory for a longer period of time.

3. Previous studies generating word lists

Bontrager (1991) describes some of the oldest known word lists of the English language, which date as far back as the 16th century, as absent of any frequency component and in the form of glossaries for foreign language learning used to either explain useful but difficult words or those that were simple and common such as names of animals, body parts, and professions – some of these simple word lists were repro-duced by Wright (1884 cited in Bontrager 1991) in order to compile his book of Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies.

However, it was also during this century when the idea that there is a basic core vocabulary for the language may have first ap-peared with the publication of Bright’s (1588 cited in Fries 1950)Characterie: An Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Char-acter, the first book of shorthand in the English language, in which 559 words were listed with their shorthand symbols and shown to be able to represent the meanings of an additional 6,000 words as either antonyms or synonyms (see e.g. Fries 1950: 2).

Like Bright’s (1588) word count, many of the word lists com-piled in the 19th century were made for use by stenographers (Bon-trager 1991; Fries 1950). One of the most significant word lists from this period is Kaeding’s (1898 cited in Fries 1950) Haufigkeitsworter-buch der deutschen Sprache (Frequency List of the Words of the

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German Language) which was considered a great undertaking as it was based on a corpus of about eleven million running words and thus needed to be analyzed by 5,000 stenographers (Howatt 1984; Nisbet 1960). Although unusual, as it was one of the few word lists not done in English, the Haufigkeitsworterbuch is considered significant be-cause it established a standard of methodology that has been used ever since and with little variation (Fries 1950; Nisbet 1960); the methodo-logical procedure involves using: 1) a wide range of sources as a basis for the word count and 2) frequency to determine the usefulness or ‘merit’ of a word (Fries 1950: 5).

3.1. Prominent word lists created during the early 20th century

Although several early word lists were created and used for the pur-pose of developing new writing systems such as those for stenogra-phers as mentioned above and also for the blind (for an example see Knowles 1904 cited in Fries 1950), most word frequency investiga-tions were conducted for pedagogical reasons (Bontrager 1991). There was a marked rise in such investigations during the first half of the twentieth century – over forty word lists were published by 1944 – with particular interest focused in the areas of spelling, reading, vo-cabulary, writing, and foreign language studies, and much of the work done on written (i.e. correspondence) or printed (e.g. books and news-papers) samples of language rather than on oral ones (e.g. speeches and telephone conversations) (Bontrager 1991) (for examples of studies done on spoken language see Fairbanks 1944; French/ Carter/Koenig 1930; Nice 1932).

It was during this period when Thorndike’s series of word lists were published, the first of these being The Teacher’s Word Book (Thorndike 1921), a list of 10,000 word types found to be the most frequently and widely used words in both printed (the Bible and Eng-lish classics, literature for children, elementary school textbooks, newspapers, and books about sewing, cooking, the trades, and the like) and written (i.e. correspondence) materials of that time. Accord-ing to the introduction (p. vi), by indicating how important a word is, the word book may be used to help the teacher, especially one who is


a novice or has little teaching experience, to decide if a word should be taught at a certain grade level or not and if so how thoroughly it should be taught and reviewed. Although Thorndike would later im-prove and expand on this and future word lists he would compile, it was with this first word book (Thorndike 1921) in which he made a significant contribution to the technique for word counting by adding the range figure (the number indicating how many different sources or text types a word occurs in) to the frequency count (Fries 1950). In other words, a word was not considered important and thus not added to the word list unless it both appeared frequently in the corpus as well as across different types of texts.

3.1.1. A Teacher’s Word Book of 30,000 Words

Thorndike’s most comprehensive word list was the word book he co-authored with Lorge titled A Teacher’s Word Book of 30,000 Words (Thorndike/Lorge 1944) which was a compilation of four previous word counts: 1) A Teacher’s Word Book of 20,000 Words (Thorndike 1931); 2) the Lorge magazine count; 3) a count of 120 juvenile books by Thorndike; and 4) A Semantic Count of English Words (Thorndike/ Lorge 1944). In the introduction to the word book, detailed instruc-tions and rules are given for what grade level (specifically for grades 1 to 8) to teach a word at which is based on “how common the word is in standard English reading matter” (Thorndike/ Lorge 1944: x-xi).

Although Thorndike and Lorge’s (1944) word book is based on an impressively large corpus (for its time) of 18 million running words and has been considered by many researchers as “the authority on word frequency measurement in English” (Bontrager 1991: 92) long after its first publication, it has been criticized for listing entries by word types which does not distinguish the different meanings or ‘senses’ of a word form (e.g. might can take on the meaning of ‘power’ or ‘may’) nor does it recognize that a word may be part of an idiom or ‘multi-word expression/chunk’ (Nisbet 1960) – for example, according to a semantic count (a count in which the different senses or meanings of a word type are kept separate) in Nisbet (1960), the word type account not only has a financial meaning (10% of the count) but also means ‘give reason’ in the expression account for (15% of the

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count), and ‘story’ in give an account of (35% of the count) with the remaining meanings of the word type used in other expressions (33% of the count; e.g. on account of) or having other minor meanings (7% of the count).

There are two possible solutions to this problem: to either 1) create a separate idiom list as a supplement to the word frequency count or 2) use a system of headwords in which word types are cate-gorized into word families under a base or root word (i.e. headword) and appear along with short phrases in which the word appears (Nisbet 1960) – this system was developed by Palmer in his work at the Institute for Research in English Teaching in Tokyo during the 1930s in an effort to identify a relatively small core vocabulary of frequently occurring headwords in hopes that knowledge of these words would enable the L2 reader to more quickly advance to the stage where he/she would be able to recognize most of the words en-countered in authentic printed texts (Fries 1950; Nisbet 1960). Mi-chael West was to later employ Palmer’s system of headwords and Lorge’s (1949) most recent semantic count at the time to create his General Service List of English Words (West 1953).

3.1.2. A General Service List of English Words

Based on a corpus of five million running words, West’s (1953) AGeneral Service List of English Words (GSL) is a list of approxi-mately 2,000 word families found to be the most useful or of most ‘general service’ to English language learners. Simply put, a word family consists of a headword (e.g. accept) and all its inflected (e.g. accepts, accepted, accepting) and derived forms (e.g. acceptance, acceptably, unacceptable).

Besides frequency and range, criteria for the selection of these words include stylistic level, ease/difficulty of learning, and coverage of useful concepts (for a detailed description of the selection criteria, see West 1953: ix-x). In order to construct the GSL, West incorpo-rated the findings of The Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection (Palmer/West/Faucett 1936 cited in West 1953), a major study on word selection based on most of the prominent word counts conducted up to the 1930s, with a semantic count by Lorge (1949) making it


possible to sub-classify the 2,000 headwords of the Interim Report (also referred to as the Carnegie Report) with its multiple meanings and uses as indicated by the semantic count and thus increasing the pedagogical value of the word list (Howatt 1984; Nisbet 1960; Richards 1974).

As can be seen from the following example from the GSL of the headword game, a word occurring 638 times in a count of five million running words (West 1953: vii), it may be best to teach meanings with a high percentage of occurrences such as meanings 2 and 3 in the ex-ample to learners at the beginner stage while those with low percent-ages (such as meanings 1 and 4) may best be taught at a more ad-vanced stage:

GAME 638 (1) (amusement, children’s play) Fun and games It’s not serious; it’s just a game

9%

(2) (with the idea of competition, e.g., cards, football, etc.) A game of football Indoor games; out-door games

38%

(3) (a particular contest) We won, six games to three I played a poor game Playing a losing game (10.5%)

23%

(4) (games = athletic contest) Olympic Games

8%

Note: As with many of the entries in the GSL, the percentages do not add up to 100 due to minor meanings having been omitted.

Although the GSL was compiled in the 1950s, it is yet unrivaled as a word frequency list for it is still more widely used than even the most recent computer-compiled high frequency word lists (Zimmerman 1997) and covers up to 90% of fiction texts (Hirsh/Nation 1992), 75% of those in nonfiction (Hwang/Nation 1989), and 76% of academic texts (Coxhead 1998). The list, having been created to be of general service to English language learners (ELLs), has been used to drive instruction in second language teaching by aiding in the design of such materials as textbooks and graded readers (texts such as novels written with and restricted to certain vocabulary or grammatical structures to

164 Warren Matsuoka

suit ELLs at different levels of English proficiency) (Wodinsky/Nation 1988). Furthermore, Harlech-Jones (1983) found the GSL to be an essential tool for systematic vocabulary instruction having found that 80% of ELLs’ lexical errors were contained in the GSL.

The GSL of course is not without its criticisms. An obvious shortcoming of the list, which was developed in the 1940s and pub-lished in the early 1950s, is that it understandably does not contain up-to-date lexis such as CD, DVD, television, video and website (Hancio�lu/Neufeld/Eldridge 2008; Matsuoka/Hirsh 2010). Another criticism of the GSL is that, while its 1st 1,000 words provide high coverage of various texts such as a long economics text (77.7%) and short novels (84.8%), the 2nd 1,000 words of the list provide compara-tively little coverage of the same texts (4.8% and 5.8%, respectively) (Nation/Waring 1997) and thus these lower frequency words may be in need of some revision (Engels 1968; Hancio�lu et al. 2008; Hwang/ Nation 1989).

3.2. Prominent word lists compiled using computer technology

Word frequency counts may be considered as part of a broader sub-field of applied linguistics/TESOL referred to as corpus linguistics which studies samples of ‘real world’ or authentic language expressed in written and/or verbal form and which, according to Meyer (2002), could also be considered a methodology which posits the importance of basing the analysis of language on real, actual instances of writing and speech as opposed to those that are contrived.

Originally done completely by hand and on paper (Fries 1950; Nisbet 1960), studies based on corpus research such as word fre-quency counts began to use computers to both compile and analyse corpora for the purposes of quantitative analysis (Kennedy 1998; Schmitt 2000) from the 1960s with work on the last major ‘pre-electronic corpus’, the Survey of English Usage (SEU) Corpus, begun in 1959 and completed in the late 1960s (Kennedy 1998).


3.2.1. The Brown Corpus and Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English

The turning point in corpus linguistics which involved the initial use of computer technological methods transpired during the early 1960s when Kucera and Francis: 1) created the first computerized corpus of printed American English, the Brown Corpus, which contained over one million running words representative of adult-oriented prose pub-lished in the U.S. during the year 1961, and 2) published their classic work Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English (Kucera/Francis 1967) which provides the results of statistical analy-ses conducted on the corpus. Soon after Computational Analysis was published, Kucera was also involved in compiling the first dictionary using corpus linguistics, the 1969 edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (Morris 1969).

The one-million-word Brown Corpus, which was drawn from 500 samples (e.g. of books, periodicals, essays) of about 2,000 words each distributed across 15 different text categories or genres such as news reportage, science, humour, religion, and reviews (e.g. of music and theatre) (Kucera/Francis 1967), was still considered relatively large at the time as the texts had to be typed in manually (Schmitt 2000). However, this pioneering corpus may now be considered small and outdated when compared to more recently compiled corpora such as the COBUILD Bank of English Corpus and the British National Corpus which contain hundreds of millions of running words each (Kennedy 1998; Moon 1998).

Nonetheless, the Brown Corpus’s contributions to the field of corpus linguistics are made apparent not only through its influence as a widely used resource for researching American English (McCarthy/Carter 1997) but also its use as a model for subsequent ‘first-generation’ corpora (corpora of similar size that were compiled soon after the Brown Corpus was made available publicly) (Kennedy 1998; McCarthy/Carter 1997), the most prominent being the Lancas-ter-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) Corpus – the identically-structured British-English counterpart to the Brown Corpus (for descriptions of the LOB and other corpora modelled on the Brown Corpus see Kennedy 1998; McCarthy/Carter 1997).

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3.2.2. The American Heritage Word Frequency Book

Following Kucera and Francis’ lead, Carroll, Davies, and Richman also took advantage of the most recent computer technology at the time to compile their word frequency list and the corpus the list was to be based on (Carroll 1972; Carroll et al. 1971). In November 1969, Carroll and his associates began their study by conducting a survey of public, private, and Roman Catholic school systems in the United States in which they asked the respondents to list the most common reading materials (e.g. textbooks, library books, encyclopaedias, po-etry, magazines) used for grades 3 to 9 in their schools; this was done in order to find the publications most representative of printed school materials for their American Heritage Intermediate (AHI) Corpus (Carroll et al. 1971).

Ultimately, the AHI Corpus consisted of approximately five million running words and about 87,000 word types drawn from a total of 1,000 publications and became the basis for their word list, The American Heritage Word Frequency Book (Carroll et al. 1971), as well as the citation base for the American Heritage School Dictionary (Carroll et al. 1971; Manelis 1972).

Besides providing the frequencies (the total frequency of a word, and the frequency of a word for each grade level and school subject area) for each of the 87,000 word types, the Word Frequency Book also indicates the dispersion, frequency-per-million index, and Standard Frequency Index (SFI) for each of the word types as well – these three new statistical indices were introduced in order to help overcome the biases in the sampling of different types of material which occurred in most previous word counts (for a description of the indices see Carroll et al. 1971: 1-4).

In the field of TESOL, computer-generated word frequency counts have often focused on identifying the most useful words in academic texts (e.g. lectures, journal articles, textbooks) while basing word selection on the criteria of frequency, range and dispersion – the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000) is one such word list.


3.2.3. The Academic Word List

The AWL (Coxhead 2000), which is made up of 570 word families thought to be necessary for students pursuing higher education regard-less of their discipline of study, is one of the most recent compilations of the most frequent vocabulary specific to academic texts (Hyland/Tse 2007). The Academic Corpus (Coxhead 1998), the corpus that was designed for the study, consists of about 3.5 million running words and 70,377 word types drawn from 414 academic texts found in 28 subject areas within the disciplines of arts, commerce, law and science.

The academic relevance of the AWL, which does not contain any word families from the GSL (West 1953), is supported by the finding that it covers 10% of the Academic Corpus while only cover-ing 1.4% of tokens in a similar-sized corpus of fiction texts (Coxhead 2000). The fact that the AWL, compared to its predecessor the Uni-versity Word List (UWL) (Xue/Nation 1984), provides slightly more coverage of the corpus (10% as opposed to the UWL’s 9.8%) with 266 fewer word families to remember shows how much better of a return the student gets from learning the newer of the two academic vocabulary lists. However, the AWL has been criticized for its bias towards fields such as law and economics and due to its promotion of the idea that there is a ‘single academic literacy’ (Hyland/Tse 2007). In addition to word counts that focus on academic words across disciplines, a few researchers have analysed academic vocabulary in a single discipline across its sub-disciplines (for computer science, see Lam 2001; for medicine see Wang/Liang/Ge 2008). Here we look at Ward’s studies which aimed to construct word lists to aid L2 engi-neering students in Thailand.

3.2.4. The Engineering Word List

Ward (1999) successfully set out to demonstrate that there may be a more efficient alternative to learning the 2,836 word families of the combined GSL and UWL word lists for both students and teachers involved in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs by creating the 3,000-word Engineering Word List (EngList). To test the predictive power of his new EngList, which was compiled from a one-million-

168 Warren Matsuoka

word corpus of first-year undergraduate multi-disciplinary engineering texts (specifically, engineering mechanics, engineering thermodynam-ics, fluid mechanics, mechanics of materials, and statistics and prob-ability), Ward (1999) created an Interdisciplinary Corpus made up of twelve 5,000-word texts from twelve different academic disciplines, six of which were engineering disciplines: three background engineer-ing (engineering materials, engineering mechanics, fluid mechanics), three specialist engineering (chemical, electrical and mechanical engi-neering), three background sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), and three humanities (economics, philosophy, psychology).

Compared to the GSL, the first 2,000 words of EngList (i.e. EngList 1 and 2) exhibited better coverage of not only the engineer-ing-related texts but all the texts from the sciences and humanities disciplines as well – though there was almost no difference in cover-age of the philosophy text. Furthermore, EngList 1 and 2 provided: 1) at least 95% coverage of half of the six engineering discipline texts (electrical engineering, engineering materials, and engineering me-chanics) and 2) at least 11.6% more coverage of all six engineering discipline texts than the GSL.

3.2.5. The Basic Engineering List

Ten years after presenting his specialized word list for 1st year under-graduate engineering students, Ward (2009b), after discovering that even after at least six years of English language learning in secondary and possibly primary school many of his EFL students in Thailand had barely even reached the 1,000-mark of general service vocabulary knowledge (see Ward 2009a for details of this study), published his article describing the creation of a shorter list of 299 word types called the Basic Engineering List (BEL) made for ‘less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates’ who have little time to increase their lexical knowledge (2009b: 107).

Ward’s new word list, created out of a 271,000-word Engineer-ing Corpus (EC) extracted from 25 different engineering textbooks of five different sub-disciplines (chemical, civil, electrical, industrial and mechanical) at Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand, is more accessible as it is based on word types and not word families as


all the previously mentioned word lists were based thus reducing the number of lexis to be learned. For example, knowing a ‘word’ in the GSL or Ward’s EngList would also involve knowing all its word fam-ily members so it is assumed in knowing the word accept the reader would also know its inflected (accepts, accepted, accepting) and de-rived forms (e.g. acceptance, acceptably, unacceptable). However, when a word list is based solely on word types, such as the BEL, then there is no assumption that any of the word family members of a given word are also known to the reader.

Therefore, as Ward (2009b) points out, if all the word types or family members in the GSL and AWL were counted, then the lists would in fact contain 8,000 and 3,000 words respectively. Ward’s (2009b) justification for defining a word as a word type and not a word family for his BEL study is fourfold: 1) removing the need to know the inflected and derived forms of a word lightens the learning load; 2) non-Latinate L1 background learners (such as his students are) are not at a disadvantage from not knowing the inflected forms (Corson 1997; Ward/Chuenjundaeng 2009); 3) considerable knowl-edge of English grammar is often required to understand inflected forms (e.g. -ed, -ing) and distinguish their various uses; and 4) distri-butional profiles of inflected forms can be quite different from each other and the headword (e.g. rate appeared with high frequency under the chemical engineering part of the EC but not so much in the other four engineering sub-disciplines, while rated appeared frequently under electrical engineering, once in industrial but did not occur at all in the other three sub-disciplines).

Though containing almost 20 times as fewer words than the AWL, the 299-word BEL provides 16.4% coverage of the EC as op-posed to the AWL’s 11.3% coverage.

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4. Use of word lists in the language classroom

With the aid of word lists, materials writers could not only ensure the most useful words occur in the ELT course books or readers they write but also control for their frequency and dispersion throughout the text to promote acquisition of these words by the L2 learner. The English language teacher could also in a similar vein make sure his/her students are exposed to these words frequently enough (i.e. about ten times) throughout the length of the course.

According to Grabe (2009: 280), L2 learners should be explic-itly taught or exposed to high to mid-frequency words in the following order: 1) the first 300 most frequent words from the GSL – these are mainly function words which act as the essential ‘glue’ of the lan-guage; 2) words 300 to 1,500 – which along with the first 300 words provide a coverage of close to 75% of most texts; and 3) 1,500 to 2,500 – which includes the AWL. To promote the acquisition of any words beyond these 2,500, Grabe (2009: 280) recommends extensive reading of topically related material as it “offers good opportunities for the recycling of vocabulary, working with associated sets of words, and word collecting”.

5. Final words

In the context of research-informed teaching, the function of word lists in second language teaching and learning would appear to pro-vide teachers and their learners with selected vocabulary items to in-form choices made in and out of the classroom, including: (1) the vo-cabulary learning goals for particular learners; (2) the order of acquisi-tion of words, starting with the most useful words; (3) selection of suitable reading material for both extensive and intensive contexts; and (4) the development of assessment tools to measure vocabulary learning over time. As vocabulary learning outcomes change, so will


the content of vocabulary lists to ensure that vocabulary learning is relevant and informed by research.

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Notes on Contributors

DAVID HIRSH is senior lecturer in TESOL at the University of Sydney, teaching on the Master of Education (TESOL) program and supervising doctoral students in the areas of vocabulary studies, and language and culture. His own research focuses on vocabulary development, aca-demic adjustment, and indigenous language revitalization. He has pub-lished in Reading in a Foreign Language and Revue Française de Lin-guistique Appliquée, and in the volumes Teaching Academic Writing: An introduction for teachers of second language writers (2009) and Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (2010). David Hirsh is co-editor of University of Sydney Papers in TESOL. YU-TSE LEE conducted postgraduate research in the Faculty of Educa-tion and Social Work, University of Sydney in 2010. He previously taught English as a Foreign Language at high school level in Taiwan. He has a research interest in factors affecting foreign language vo-cabulary acquisition. The research reported in this volume was under-taken as part of his Dissertation. CHEN-CHUN LIN completed her Master of Education (TESOL and Languages) degree in 2010 and commenced her PhD in 2011 in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. Her current PhD research interests include L2 word learnability focusing on written form, the nature of orthographical knowledge, orthographic distance between languages and cross-language transfer, the nature of morphological knowledge, and the effect of word length on vocabu-lary acquisition. WARREN MATSUOKA is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. His present study involves the creation of frequency counts of the vocabulary occurring

180 Notes on Contributors

in L1 secondary textbooks in order to inform vocabulary teaching and ELT materials design for secondary schools in EFL contexts. He has previously taught English in Japan and Taiwan and presently teaches in a language school in Sydney. Warren has published his research in Reading in a Foreign Language. HUA ZHONG is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education and So-cial Work, University of Sydney. She has previously taught English as a Foreign Language at high school level in China and has tutored Sec-ond Language Acquisition in the Master of Education (TESOL) pro-gram at the University of Sydney. She holds the position of research assistant in the fields of TESOL and Educational Psychology. Her current research interests include vocabulary development and acqui-sition, vocabulary knowledge assessment and English language test-ing. Hua Zhong has published her research in the University of Sydney Papers in TESOL.

Studies in Language and Communication

Linguistic Insights

Vol. 1 Maurizio Gotti & Marina Dossena (eds) Modality in Specialized Texts. Selected Papers of the 1st CERLIS Conference. 421 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906767-10-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-5340-4

Vol. 2 Giuseppina Cortese & Philip Riley (eds) Domain-specific English. Textual Practices across Communities and Classrooms. 420 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906768-98-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-5884-8

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This series aims to promote specialist language studies in the fields of linguistic theory and applied linguistics, by publishing volumes that focus on specific aspects of language use in one or several languages and provide valuable insights into language and communication re-search. A cross-disciplinary approach is favoured and most European languages are accepted.

The series includes two types of books:

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– Collected papers – assembling papers from workshops, confer-ences or symposia.

Each volume of the series is subjected to a double peer-reviewing process.

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Vol. 6 Vijay Bhatia, Christopher N. Candlin & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts. Arbitration Texts in Europe. 385 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-906770-85-0 · US-ISBN 0-8204-6254-3

Vol. 7 Marina Dossena & Charles Jones (eds) Insights into Late Modern English. 2nd edition. 378 pages. 2003, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-257-9 · US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8927-8

Vol. 8 Maurizio Gotti Specialized Discourse. Linguistic Features and Changing Conventions. 351 pages. 2003, 2005. ISBN 3-03910-606-6 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7000-7

Vol. 9 Alan Partington, John Morley & Louann Haarman (eds) Corpora and Discourse. 420 pages. 2004. ISBN 3-03910-026-2 · US-ISBN 0-8204-6262-4

Vol. 10 Martina Möllering The Acquisition of German Modal Particles. A Corpus-Based Approach. 290 pages. 2004. ISBN 3-03910-043-2 · US-ISBN 0-8204-6273-X

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Vol. 12 Wendy Swanson Modes of Co-reference as an Indicator of Genre. 430 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-03910-052-1 · US-ISBN 0-8204-6855-X

Vol. 13 Gina Poncini Discursive Strategies in Multicultural Business Meetings. 2nd edition. 338 pages. 2004, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-296-8 · US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8937-7

Vol. 14 Christopher N. Candlin & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Intercultural Aspects of Specialized Communication. 2nd edition. 369 pages. 2004, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-258-6 · US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8926-1

Vol. 15 Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti & Elena Tognini Bonelli (eds) Academic Discourse. New Insights into Evaluation. 234 pages. 2004. ISBN 3-03910-353-9 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7016-3

Vol. 16 Marina Dossena & Roger Lass (eds) Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology. 405 pages. 2004. ISBN 3-03910-362-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7018-X

Vol. 17 Judy Noguchi The Science Review Article. An Opportune Genre in the Construction of Science. 274 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-426-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7034-1

Vol. 18 Giuseppina Cortese & Anna Duszak (eds) Identity, Community, Discourse. English in Intercultural Settings. 495 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-632-5 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7163-1

Vol. 19 Anna Trosborg & Poul Erik Flyvholm Jørgensen (eds) Business Discourse. Texts and Contexts. 250 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-606-6 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7000-7

Vol. 20 Christopher Williams Tradition and Change in Legal English. Verbal Constructions in Prescriptive Texts. 2nd revised edition. 216 pages. 2005, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-444-3.

Vol. 21 Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk & Joanna Przedlacka (eds) English Pronunciation Models: A Changing Scene. 2nd edition. 476 pages. 2005, 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-682-9.

Vol. 22 Christián Abello-Contesse, Rubén Chacón-Beltrán, M. Dolores López-Jiménez & M. Mar Torreblanca-López (eds) Age in L2 Acquisition and Teaching. 214 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-668-6 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7174-7

Vol. 23 Vijay K. Bhatia, Maurizio Gotti, Jan Engberg & Dorothee Heller (eds) Vagueness in Normative Texts. 474 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-653-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7169-0

Vol. 24 Paul Gillaerts & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Genre Variation in Business Letters. 2nd printing. 407 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-681-2.

Vol. 25 Ana María Hornero, María José Luzón & Silvia Murillo (eds) Corpus Linguistics. Applications for the Study of English. 2nd printing. 526 pages. 2006, 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-726-0

Vol. 26 J. Lachlan Mackenzie & María de los Ángeles Gómez-González (eds) Studies in Functional Discourse Grammar. 259 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-696-1 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7558-0

Vol. 27 Debbie G. E. Ho Classroom Talk. Exploring the Sociocultural Structure of Formal ESL Learning. 2nd edition. 254 pages. 2006, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-434-4

Vol. 28 Javier Pérez-Guerra, Dolores González-Álvarez, Jorge L. Bueno-Alonso & Esperanza Rama-Martínez (eds) ‘Of Varying Language and Opposing Creed’: New Insights into Late Modern English. 455 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-788-9

Vol. 29 Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Asian Business Discourse(s). 350 pages. 2005. ISBN 3-03910-804-2 · US-ISBN 0-8204-7574-2

Vol. 30 Nicholas Brownlees (ed.) News Discourse in Early Modern Britain. Selected Papers of CHINED 2004. 300 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-805-0 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8025-8

Vol. 31 Roberta Facchinetti & Matti Rissanen (eds) Corpus-based Studies of Diachronic English. 300 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-851-4 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8040-1

Vol. 32 Marina Dossena & Susan M. Fitzmaurice (eds) Business and Official Correspondence: Historical Investigations. 209 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-880-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8352-4

Vol. 33 Giuliana Garzone & Srikant Sarangi (eds) Discourse, Ideology and Specialized Communication. 494 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-888-6

Vol. 34 Giuliana Garzone & Cornelia Ilie (eds) The Use of English in Institutional and Business Settings. An Intercultural Perspective. 372 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03910-889-3

Vol. 35 Vijay K. Bhatia & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Explorations in Specialized Genres. 316 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-995-2 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8372-9

Vol. 36 Heribert Picht (ed.) Modern Approaches to Terminological Theories and Applications. 432 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-156-6 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8380-X

Vol. 37 Anne Wagner & Sophie Cacciaguidi-Fahy (eds) Legal Language and the Search for Clarity / Le langage juridique et la quête de clarté.

Practice and Tools / Pratiques et instruments. 487 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-169-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8388-5

Vol. 38 Juan Carlos Palmer-Silveira, Miguel F. Ruiz-Garrido & Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez (eds) Intercultural and International Business Communication: Theory, Research and Teaching. 2nd edition. 343 pages. 2006, 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-680-5

Vol. 39 Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Dieter Kastovsky, Nikolaus Ritt & Herbert Schendl (eds) Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500–2000. 250 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-181-7 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8394-X

Vol. 40 Marina Dossena & Irma Taavitsainen (eds) Diachronic Perspectives on Domain-Specific English. 280 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03910-176-0 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8391-5

Vol. 41 John Flowerdew & Maurizio Gotti (eds) Studies in Specialized Discourse. 293 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-178-7

Vol. 42 Ken Hyland & Marina Bondi (eds) Academic Discourse Across Disciplines. 320 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-183-3 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8396-6

Vol. 43 Paul Gillaerts & Philip Shaw (eds) The Map and the Landscape: Norms and Practices in Genre. 256 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-182-5 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8395-4

Vol. 44 Maurizio Gotti & Davide Giannoni (eds) New Trends in Specialized Discourse Analysis. 301 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-184-1 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8381-8

Vol. 45 Maurizio Gotti & Françoise Salager-Meyer (eds) Advances in Medical Discourse Analysis: Oral and Written Contexts. 492 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-185-X · US-ISBN 0-8204-8382-6

Vol. 46 Maurizio Gotti & Susan Šarcevic (eds) Insights into Specialized Translation. 396 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-186-8 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8383-4

Vol. 47 Khurshid Ahmad & Margaret Rogers (eds) Evidence-based LSP: Translation, Text and Terminology. 584 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-187-9

Vol. 48 Hao Sun & Dániel Z. Kádár (eds) It’s the Dragon’s Turn: Chinese Institutional Discourses. 262 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-175-6

Vol. 49 Cristina Suárez-Gómez Relativization in Early English (950-1250): the Position of Relative Clauses. 149 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-203-1 · US-ISBN 0-8204-8904-2

Vol. 50 Maria Vittoria Calvi & Luisa Chierichetti (eds) Nuevas tendencias en el discurso de especialidad. 319 pages. 2006. ISBN 978-3-03911-261-6

Vol. 51 Mari Carmen Campoy & María José Luzón (eds) Spoken Corpora in Applied Linguistics. 274 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-275-3

Vol. 52 Konrad Ehlich & Dorothee Heller (Hrsg.) Die Wissenschaft und ihre Sprachen. 323 pages. 2006. ISBN 978-3-03911-272-2

Vol. 53 Jingyu Zhang The Semantic Salience Hierarchy Model: The L2 Acquisition of Psych Predicates 273 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-300-2

Vol. 54 Norman Fairclough, Giuseppina Cortese & Patrizia Ardizzone (eds) Discourse and Contemporary Social Change. 555 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-276-0

Vol. 55 Jan Engberg, Marianne Grove Ditlevsen, Peter Kastberg & Martin Stegu (eds) New Directions in LSP Teaching. 331 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-433-7

Vol. 56 Dorothee Heller & Konrad Ehlich (Hrsg.) Studien zur Rechtskommunikation. 322 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-436-8

Vol. 57 Forthcoming.

Vol. 58 Carmen Frehner Email – SMS – MMS 294 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-451-1

Vol. 59 Isabel Balteiro The Directionality of Conversion in English: A Dia-Synchronic Study. 276 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-241-8

Vol. 60 Maria Milagros Del Saz Rubio English Discourse Markers of Reformulation. 237 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-196-1

Vol. 61 Sally Burgess & Pedro Martín-Martín (eds) English as an Additional Language in Research Publication and Communication. 259 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-462-7

Vol. 62 Sandrine Onillon Pratiques et représentations de l’écrit. 458 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-464-1

Vol. 63 Hugo Bowles & Paul Seedhouse (eds) Conversation Analysis and Language for Specific Purposes. 2nd edition. 337 pages. 2007, 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0045-2

Vol. 64 Vijay K. Bhatia, Christopher N. Candlin & Paola Evangelisti Allori (eds) Language, Culture and the Law. The Formulation of Legal Concepts across Systems and Cultures. 342 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-470-2

Vol. 65 Jonathan Culpeper & Dániel Z. Kádár (eds) Historical (Im)politeness. 300 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-496-2

Vol. 66 Linda Lombardo (ed.) Using Corpora to Learn about Language and Discourse. 237 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-522-8

Vol. 67 Natsumi Wakamoto Extroversion/Introversion in Foreign Language Learning. Interactions with Learner Strategy Use. 159 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-596-9

Vol. 68 Eva Alcón-Soler (ed.) Learning How to Request in an Instructed Language Learning Context. 260 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-601-0

Vol. 69 Domenico Pezzini The Translation of Religious Texts in the Middle Ages. 428 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-600-3

Vol. 70 Tomoko Tode Effects of Frequency in Classroom Second Language Learning. Quasi-experiment and stimulated-recall analysis. 195 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-602-7

Vol. 71 Egor Tsedryk Fusion symétrique et alternances ditransitives. 211 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-609-6

Vol. 72 Cynthia J. Kellett Bidoli & Elana Ochse (eds) English in International Deaf Communication. 444 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-610-2

Vol. 73 Joan C. Beal, Carmela Nocera & Massimo Sturiale (eds) Perspectives on Prescriptivism. 269 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-632-4

Vol. 74 Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley & Erik Castello (eds) Corpora for University Language Teachers. 308 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-639-3

Vol. 75 María Luisa Pérez Cañado (ed.) English Language Teaching in the European Credit Transfer System: Facing the Challenge. 251 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-654-6

Vol. 76 Marina Dossena & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds) Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence. Methodology and Data. 291 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-658-4

Vol. 77 Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff (eds) Current Issues in Late Modern English. 436 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-660-7

Vol. 78 Marta Navarro Coy (ed.) Practical Approaches to Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. 297 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-661-4

Vol. 79 Qing Ma Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. 333 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-666-9

Vol. 80 Martin Solly, Michelangelo Conoscenti & Sandra Campagna (eds) Verbal/Visual Narrative Texts in Higher Education. 384 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-672-0

Vol. 81 Meiko Matsumoto From Simple Verbs to Periphrastic Expressions: The Historical Development of Composite Predicates, Phrasal Verbs, and Related Constructions in English. 235 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-675-1

Vol. 82 Melinda Dooly Doing Diversity. Teachers’ Construction of Their Classroom Reality. 180 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-687-4

Vol. 83 Victoria Guillén-Nieto, Carmen Marimón-Llorca & Chelo Vargas-Sierra (eds) Intercultural Business Communication and Simulation and Gaming Methodology. 392 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-688-1

Vol. 84 Maria Grazia Guido English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains. 285 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-689-8

Vol. 85 Erik Castello Text Complexity and Reading Comprehension Tests. 352 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-717-8

Vol. 86 Maria-Lluisa Gea-Valor, Isabel García-Izquierdo & Maria-José Esteve (eds) Linguistic and Translation Studies in Scientific Communication. 317 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0069-8

Vol. 87 Carmen Navarro, Rosa Mª Rodríguez Abella, Francesca Dalle Pezze & Renzo Miotti (eds) La comunicación especializada. 355 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-733-8

Vol. 88 Kiriko Sato The Development from Case-Forms to Prepositional Constructions in Old English Prose. 231 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-763-5

Vol. 89 Dorothee Heller (Hrsg.) Formulierungsmuster in deutscher und italienischer Fachkommunikation. Intra- und interlinguale Perspektiven. 315 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-778-9

Vol. 90 Henning Bergenholtz, Sandro Nielsen & Sven Tarp (eds) Lexicography at a Crossroads. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias Today, Lexicographical Tools Tomorrow. 372 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-799-4

Vol. 91 Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani The Development of Controversies: From the Early Modern Period to Online Discussion Forums. 317 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-3911-711-6

Vol. 92 María Luisa Carrió-Pastor (ed.) Content and Language Integrated Learning: Cultural Diversity. 178 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-3911-818-2

Vol. 93 Roger Berry Terminology in English Language Teaching: Nature and Use. 262 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0013-1

Vol. 94 Roberto Cagliero & Jennifer Jenkins (eds) Discourses, Communities, and Global Englishes 240 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0012-4

Vol. 95 Facchinetti Roberta, Crystal David, Seidlhofer Barbara (eds) From International to Local English – And Back Again. 268 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0011-7

Vol. 96 Cesare Gagliardi & Alan Maley (eds) EIL, ELF, Global English: Teaching and Learning Issues 376 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0010-0

Vol. 97 Sylvie Hancil (ed.) The Role of Prosody in Affective Speech. 403 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-696-6

Vol. 98 Marina Dossena & Roger Lass (eds) Studies in English and European Historical Dialectology. 257 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0024-7

Vol. 99 Christine Béal Les interactions quotidiennes en français et en anglais. De l’approche comparative à l’analyse des situations interculturelles. 424 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0027-8

Vol. 100 Maurizio Gotti (ed.) Commonality and Individuality in Academic Discourse. 398 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0023-0

Vol. 101 Javier E. Díaz Vera & Rosario Caballero (eds) Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts. 213 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-822-9

Vol. 102 Nuria Edo Marzá The Specialised Lexicographical Approach: A Step further in Dictionary-making. 316 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0043-8

Vol. 103 Carlos Prado-Alonso, Lidia Gómez-García, Iria Pastor-Gómez & David Tizón-Couto (eds) New Trends and Methodologies in Applied English Language Research. Diachronic, Diatopic and Contrastive Studies. 348 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0046-9

Vol. 104 Françoise Salager-Meyer & Beverly A. Lewin Crossed Words: Criticism in Scholarly Writing? 371 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0049-0.

Vol. 105 Javier Ruano-García Early Modern Northern English Lexis: A Literary Corpus-Based Study. 611 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0058-2

Vol. 106 Rafael Monroy-Casas Systems for the Phonetic Transcription of English: Theory and Texts. 280 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0059-9

Vol. 107 Nicola T. Owtram The Pragmatics of Academic Writing. A Relevance Approach to the Analysis of Research Article Introductions. 311 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0060-5

Vol. 108 Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe, Juan Manuel Sierra & Francisco Gallardo del Puerto (eds) Content and Foreign Language Integrated Learning. Contributions to Multilingualism in European Contexts 343 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0074-2

Vol. 109 Ángeles Linde López & Rosalía Crespo Jiménez (eds) Professional English in the European context: The EHEA challenge. 374 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0088-9

Vol. 110 Rosalía Rodríguez-Vázquez The Rhythm of Speech, Verse and Vocal Music: A New Theory. 394 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0309-5

Vol. 111 Anastasios Tsangalidis & Roberta Facchinetti (eds) Studies on English Modality. In Honour of Frank Palmer. 392 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0310-1


Vol. 113 Mihhail Lotman & Maria-Kristiina Lotman (eds) Frontiers in Comparative Prosody. In memoriam: Mikhail Gasparov. 426 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0373-6

Vol. 114 Merja Kytö, John Scahill & Harumi Tanabe (eds) Language Change and Variation from Old English to Late Modern English. A Festschrift for Minoji Akimoto 422 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0372-9

Vol. 115 Giuliana Garzone & Paola Catenaccio (eds) Identities across Media and Modes: Discursive Perspectives. 379 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-0343-0386-6

Vol. 116 Elena Landone Los marcadores del discurso y cortesía verbal en español. 390 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0413-9

Vol. 117 Maurizio Gotti & Christopher Williams (eds) Legal Discourse across Languages and Cultures. 339 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0425-2

Vol. 118 David Hirsh Academic Vocabulary in Context. 217 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0426-9

Vol. 119 Yvonne Dröschel Lingua Franca English. The Role of Simplification and Transfer. 358 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0432-0

Vol. 120 Tengku Sepora Tengku Mahadi, Helia Vaezian & Mahmoud Akbari Corpora in Translation. A Practical Guide. 135 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0434-4

Vol. 121 Davide Simone Giannoni & Celina Frade (eds) Researching Language and the Law. Textual Features and Translation Issues. 278 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0443-6

Vol. 122 Daniel Madrid & Stephen Hughes (eds) Studies in Bilingual Education. 472 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0474-0

Vol. 123 Vijay K. Bhatia, Christopher N. Candlin & Maurizio Gotti (eds) The Discourses of Dispute Resolution. 290 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0476-4

Vol. 124 Davide Simone Giannoni Mapping Academic Values in the Disciplines. A Corpus-Based Approach. 288 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0488-7

Vol. 125 Giuliana Garzone & James Archibald (eds) Discourse, Identities and Roles in Specialized Communication. 419 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0494-8

Vol. 126 Iria Pastor-Gómez The Status and Development of N+N Sequences in Contemporary English Noun Phrases. 216 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0534-1

Vol. 127 Carlos Prado-Alonso Full-verb Inversion in Written and Spoken English. 261 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0535-8

Vol. 128 Tony Harris & María Moreno Jaén (eds) Corpus Linguistics in Language Teaching. 214 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0524-2

Vol. 129 Tetsuji Oda & Hiroyuki Eto (eds) Multiple Perspectives on English Philology and History of Linguistics. A Festschrift for Shoichi Watanabe on his 80th Birthday. 378 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0480-1

Vol. 130 Luisa Chierichetti & Giovanni Garofalo (eds) Lengua y Derecho: líneas de investigación interdisciplinaria. 283 pages. 2010. 978-3-0343-0463-4

Vol. 131 Paola Evangelisti Allori & Giuliana Garzone (eds) Discourse, Identities and Genres in Corporate Communication. Sponsorship, Advertising and Organizational Communication. 324 pages. 2011. 978-3-0343-0591-4


Vol. 133 Thomas Christiansen Cohesion: A Discourse Perspective. 387 pages. 2011. 978-3-0343-0619-5

Vol. 134 Giuliana Garzone & Maurizio Gotti Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise. Genres and Trends. 451 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0620-1

Vol. 135 Zsuzsa Hoffmann Ways of the World’s Words. Language Contact in the Age of Globalization. 334 pages 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0673-7

Vol. 136 Cecilia Varcasia (ed.) Becoming Multilingual. Language Learning and Language Policy between Attitudes and Identities. 213 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0687-5

Vol. 137 Forthcoming

Vol. 138 Maria Vittoria Calvi & Giovanna Mapelli (eds) La lengua del turismo. Géneros discursivos y terminología. 365 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-1011-6

Vol. 139 Ken Lau Learning to Become a Professiona in a Textually-Mediated World. A Text-Oriented Study of Placement Practices. 362 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-1016-1

Vol. 140–143 Forthcoming.

Vol. 144 Margrethe Petersen & Jan Engberg (eds) Current Trends in LSP Research. Aims and Methods. 325 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-1054-3


Vol. 146 Rita Salvi & Hiromasa Tanaka (eds) Intercultural Interactions in Business and Management. 306 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-1039-0


Vol. 149 Vijay K. Bhatia & Paola Evangelisti Allori (eds) Discourse and Identity in the Professions. Legal, Corporate and Institutional Citizenship. 352 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-1079-6

Vol. 150 Maurizio Gotti (ed.) Academic Identity Traits. A Corpus-Based Investigation. 363 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-1141-0

Vol. 151 Priscilla Heynderickx, Sylvain Dieltjens, Geert Jacobs, Paul Gillaerts & Elizabeth de Groot (eds) The Language Factor in International Business. New Perspectives on Research, Teaching and Practice. 320 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-1090-1

Vol. 152 Paul Gillaerts, Elizabeth de Groot, Sylvain Dieltjens, Priscilla Heynderickx & Geert Jacobs (eds) Researching Discourse in Business Genres. Cases and Corpora. 215 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-1092-5


Vol. 155 David Hirsh (ed.) Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research. 180 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-1108-3

David hirsh current perspectives in second language vocabulary research 2012

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