Abstrakt
Lexical knowledge is undoubtedly at the heart of all language use and learning. It has been shown to be a strong predictor of students’ performance on all four skills as well as overall language proficiency (Miralpeix & Muñoz, 2018). To date, measuring vocabulary size has been the most common and perhaps the most transparent method of determining lexical knowledge.
Advanced learners are expected to have a large vocabulary but may still have knowledge gaps (Hojati & Mirzaee, 2014). Identifying and eliminating such gaps is an important step toward furthering their language skills and competencies.
Several tests of receptive vocabulary size that identify lexical gaps have been developed (e.g. New Vocabulary Levels Test by McLean & Kramer, 2015 and Updated Vocabulary Levels Test by Webb, Sasao & Balance, 2017), but they have mostly focused on higher-frequency word families, which advanced learners should already be familiar with.
This paper presents preliminary evidence supporting the validity of a VLT based (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001) test of advanced receptive vocabulary knowledge. The test measures the knowledge of the 6th to 9th 1,000-word frequency levels from Nation’s (2012) BNC/COCA word lists. It adopts a Serial multiple-choice format (Stoeckel & Sukigara, 2018), which was designed to reduce guessing and the use of test strategies. The tool identifies gaps in knowledge of word families that are not necessary for understanding basic spoken English but are frequent enough to pose a meaningful goal for advanced learners, as knowledge of 8,000 to 9,000 words should allow them to understand written texts without the need for external assistance (Webb, 2018).
The validation process involved first identifying and replacing poorly functioning test items using data from 64 students of English philology and education from several universities in Czechia and Chile. The second version of the test was subsequently administered to 67 students of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. The responses were analysed using Classical Test Theory measures (item and reliability analyses) and exploratory factor analysis.
The tool should be useful not only to researchers specializing in lexical proficiency, but also to English teachers, as it will enable them to identify gaps in their advanced students’ lexical knowledge and adjust their vocabulary instruction accordingly.
References
Hojati, A., & Mirzaee, A. (2014). Coping with lexical gaps: Use of compensatory strategies by Iranian EFL students. Journal of Advances in Linguistics, 1(1), 7–15.
McLean, S., & Kramer, B. (2015). The Creation of a New Vocabulary Levels Test. Shiken, 19(2), 1–11.
Miralpeix, I., & Muñoz, C. (2018). Receptive vocabulary size and its relationship to EFL language skills. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 56(1), 1–24.
Nation, I. S. P. (2012). The BNC/COCA word family lists. Retrieved from
Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D., & Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test. Language Testing, 18(1), 55–88.
Stoeckel, T., & Sukigara, T. (2018). A Serial Multiple-Choice Format Designed to Reduce Overestimation of Meaning-Recall Knowledge on the Vocabulary Size Test. TESOL Quarterly, 52(4), 1050–1062.
Webb, S., Sasao, Y., & Ballance, O. (2017). The updated Vocabulary Levels Test: Developing and validating two new forms of the VLT. ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 168(1), 33–69.
Webb, S. (2018). Advanced lexical development. In Malovrh, P. A. & Benati, A. G. (Eds.), The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 401–418). Wiley.