(Linguistic Insights., Studies in Language and Communication - , V.155.) David Hirsh-Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research-Bern - New York - Peter Lang (2012)

www.peterlang.
com
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 Franaise de Linguistique Applique, 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). He is coeditor of University of Sydney Papers in TESOL.
li155
Linguistic Insights
Studies in Language and Communication
David Hirsh (ed.)
Current Perspectives
in Second Language
Vocabulary Research
Peter Lang
ISBN 978-3-0343-1108-3
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 language vocabulary research. The collection
brings together review papers and quantitative
studies, and considers vocabulary in the contexts 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 presented in this volume reflect current thinking
and research avenues at the interface between
research enquiry and second language teaching
practice.
David Hirsh (ed.) Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research
li155
li
155
www.peterlang.com
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 Franaise de Linguistique Applique, 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). He is coeditor of University of Sydney Papers in TESOL.
li155
Linguistic Insights
David Hirsh (ed.)
in Second Language
Vocabulary Research
Peter Lang
ISBN 978-3-0343-1108-3
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 language vocabulary research. The collection
brings together review papers and quantitative
studies, and considers vocabulary in the contexts 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 presented in this volume reflect current thinking
and research avenues at the interface between
research enquiry and second language teaching
practice.
David Hirsh (ed.) Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research
li155
li
155
in Second Language Vocabulary Research
Linguistic Insights
Edited by Maurizio Gotti,
University of Bergamo
Volume 155
Advisory Board
Vijay Bhatia (Hong Kong)
Christopher Candlin (Sydney)
David Crystal (Bangor)
Konrad Ehlich (Berlin / Mnchen)
Jan Engberg (Aarhus)
Norman Fairclough (Lancaster)
John Flowerdew (Hong Kong)
Ken Hyland (Hong Kong)
Roger Lass (Cape Town)
Matti Rissanen (Helsinki)
Franoise Salager-Meyer (Mrida, Venezuela)
Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff)
Susan arcevic (Rijeka)
Lawrence Solan (New York)
Peter M. Tiersma (Los Angeles)
^
PETER LANG
Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Oxford Wien
David Hirsh (ed.)
Current Perspectives in Second

Language Vocabulary Research
PETER LANG
Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Oxford Wien
Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; 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 978-3-03-431108-3
1. Second language acquisition. 2. Vocabulary--Study and teaching.
3. Language and languages--Study and teaching. I. Hirsh, David,
P118.2.C865 2012
401.93dc23
2012005696
ISSN 14248689
ISBN 9783034311083 pb. ISBN 9783035103793 eBookUS-ISBN 0-8204-8382-6
Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012

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This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
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Printed in Switzerland
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 research 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 vocabulary studies. Zhong explores the current model of second language 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 Hulstijns (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).
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 contexts 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 accomplished 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
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 vocabulary 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 Nations (2001) Learning Vocabulary
in Another Language, the introduction to Bogaards and Laufers
(2004) Vocabulary in a Second Language, Hirshs (2010) chapter
titled Researching vocabulary appearing in the Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics and Schmitts (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 language 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 learners 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 research is the nature of word knowledge, with lines of enquiry investigating 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 Paribakhts (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 research is the process of learning, with an interest in the effect of incidental and explicit forms of learning, and an interest in the effect of
learner involvement. Cases are presented in the literature for developing vocabulary knowledge incidentally through exposure to comprehensible 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 Hulstijns (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis.
A further important theme in second language vocabulary research 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 transfer of word knowledge from receptive to productive use, and identifying ways of measuring this transfer (see Zhong, this volume, for a
review of this area). Related to this is a need for improved understanding of the concept of partial word knowledge, as opposed to precise
word knowledge, and how this relates to the likelihood of a word being 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 differences 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 Mearas 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 developing 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 starting point for considerations of how to describe and capture the interrelatedness 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 influenced by choices learners make in their continuing involvement
with the target language following completion of a program of language 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 language learning. The search for effective approaches to vocabulary
development needs to consider the overall purpose of language learning for the learners involved, as this will guide teachers in setting appropriate 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 learning in and out of the classroom environment, and to identify ways to
assist learners in maximising those opportunities. There is the possibility 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
17
suited to their learners through lexical analysis of a range of texts (see

Hirsh/Coxhead 2009). There is also the possibility for learners to access online resources to report on their use of vocabulary in writing
and to investigate how specific words appear in texts written for native speaking audiences (see Cobb n.d.).
The expansion in second language vocabulary research has provided teachers with empirical data and assessment tools to inform
their decisions about what words to teach and how to embed vocabulary learning into the broader program of language learning. It is important to keep in mind, however, that words need a context in order
to develop into language, and as the vocabulary size of learners increases, 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. International 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 sciencespecific 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 Language 8/2, 689-696.
Joe, Angela 1995. Text-based tasks and incidental vocabulary learning. Second Language Research 11, 149-158.
Krashen, Stephen 1989. We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis. Modern Language 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.
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 richness 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.
19

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) Performance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: 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. Cambridge: 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 vocabulary 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, Acquisition, and Testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 209-227.
Schmitt, Norbert 2010. Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Research Manual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thorndike, Edward L. 1921. The Teachers Word Book. New York
City: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Thorndike, Edward L. / Lorge, Irving 1944. The Teachers 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. Canadian Modern Language Review 53/1, 13-40.
West, Michael 1953. A General Service List of English Words. London: 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; Lervg/Aukrust
2010; Qian/Schedl 2004), listening (Sthr 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 research 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 vocabulary 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 instruments, and analyse the constructs of these instruments. Implications 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 receptive vocabulary knowledge often appear before productive development (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. Laufers
study concluded that these two types of vocabulary knowledge developed 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 pattern 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 perspective, that the developmental pattern in vocabulary size could be influenced 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 vocabulary knowledge that measures of vocabulary size could reveal, researchers began investigating further the depth of vocabulary knowledge in terms of receptive and productive use (see Laufer 1991; Lee/
Muncie 2006). The concept of depth in vocabulary research is defined in general terms as the quality of the learners 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 another, the deeper the word is known (Meara 2009). The depth dimension 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 native speakers suggested that there was a significant difference between
the two groups with regard to their mental organizations of vocabulary.
A similar productive network association test known as Lex30
(Meara/Fitzpatrick 2000) is claimed to be able to detect the basic developmental 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 organized 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 provided 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, frequency)
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 knowledge 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 vocabulary 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 words syntagmatic and paradigmatic 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
27
dimension. The development along the continuum of the partialprecise dimension starts with identifying the certain combination of
letters or sounds that could be used to refer to objects or abstract concepts. Clark (1993) described this process as mapping written or phonological form to meaning. The recognition of the existence of the
word in a language is considered as the first step in vocabulary acquisition. 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 contexts (Henriksen 1999).
The depth dimension in Henriksens 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 container used for drinking, and its referent is the physical item of the
small container. The intensional relations refer to paradigmatic (antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and gradation) and syntagmatic relations (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 learners state of vocabulary knowledge at a certain
point of time (Read 2004). The network building view of depth reflects the degree of mastery of vocabulary as a whole property in the
learners 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 learners 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 multiaspect word knowledge approaches when they are examined at a micro-level. Being able to construct the links between words, language
28
Hua Zhong
learners should have mastered the aspects of knowledge at an individual word level. For example, in order to produce the link between
contract and agreement, a learner has to firstly understand the meaning 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 Henriksens model, the depth dimension can be conceptualized as the ability or mastery of different aspects 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 Nations (2001) form, meaning and use,
new categories of form, semantic association and pragmatic factors
are introduced to the discussion in this chapter. Form includes orthographic, phonological and morphological aspects. Semantic association refers to antonym, synonym, hyponymy and gradation. Pragmatic
factors refer to collocational restrictions, register and frequency.
The third dimension of vocabulary knowledge is the receptiveproductive 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 language (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 words form, and productive
knowledge as retrieval of the words meaning.
In Webbs (2008) study, receptive vocabulary knowledge is described 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 retrieving its meaning, and productive vocabulary use is the ability to
retrieve and produce the appropriate spoken or written form of a word
29
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 knowledge of a word should cover all aspects of what is involved in knowing 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 mastered at a receptive or productive level for use. Therefore, adapting
Nations (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/Paribakhts 1998 study also adopted the same subdivision 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 dimensions are the components of comprehension of vocabulary knowledge. 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 observed at a micro level. The partial-precise and depth dimensions describe the internal competence of a learner in vocabulary understanding, 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.
Partial-precise
dimension
Receptive
knowledge
Receptiveproductive
dimension
Depth
dimension
Comprehension
Productive
knowledge
Use
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 relationship from comprehension to use (two arrows pointing from partial-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-
31
rows from partial-precise and depth dimensions to receptive knowledge and the arrow from receptive knowledge to productive knowledge) and how these relationships change over time.
To examine the changes of relationships over time, a longitudinal research design is needed. It is more valid to explore the changes
by tracking one group of learners over time than to compare the differences between two groups of learners whose proficiency is at different levels. Schmitts (1998) longitudinal study tracked the acquisition of eleven words over one academic year among three university
students (Lithuanian, Chinese, Indian). Four aspects of vocabulary
knowledge were measured: spelling, associations, grammatical information and meaning. Interviews with the same procedure and questions were conducted with the three university participants at the beginning, 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 pronunciation 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 deterioration happened more often in the shift from receptive knowledge to
unknown status than in the shift from productive knowledge to receptive 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 aspects were interrelated. However, to date, we do not have a clear
model of this development in different aspects of vocabulary knowledge. It is of research interest to look at vocabulary development from
a multi-dimensional perspective to see how these dimensions are related 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 follows:
1) I have never seen this word before.
2) I have seen this word before but I dont 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 explanation)
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 responses were coded with different methods and were transferred to six
scores representing: a) students actual vocabulary knowledge, b) selfreported 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 vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary size.
Zarevas (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 selfreported 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 similarity. 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 activity that cannot be measured directly. However, it can be verified by
production in the L1 or receptive L2 tasks such as selection and judgement. This verification should be done for each aspect. Defining productive vocabulary as comprehensive ability to use a word in context
33
enables the observation of the mastery of different aspects in the partialprecise and depth dimensions from a single spoken or written task.
Productive
vocabulary
knowledge
Receptive
vocabulary
knowledge
meaning
Controlled
productive
knowledge
Depth
dimension
Partial-precise
dimension
form
semantic
association
Free
productive
knowledge
pragmatic
factors
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>.
34
Hua Zhong
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
I dont remember having seen this word before.

I have seen this word before, but I dont know what it means.
I have seen this word before, and I think it means _________. (synonym or translation)
I know this word. It means _________. (synonym or translation)
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 learners 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 measure 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)
b)
c)
d)
I do not know this word.

I know a little of the word meaning.
I know this word meaning quite well.
I know this word meaning very well.
35
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 description for this stage could be I dont remember I have seen or heard of
this word before. The known stage indicates mastery of word meaning. 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:
x
x
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: _______________. (translation or explanation in L1) (adapted from DAnna et al. 1991: 117)
Partial knowledge is the intermediate stage between an unknown and a

well-known word. The intermediate stage includes recognition of existence (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 dont
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 dont 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 meaning 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
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 comprehension 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 something to do with ________ (adapted from Dale 1965: 898). The advantage 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.
II.
I dont remember I have seen or heard of this word before.

I have seen or heard of this word before, but I dont 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 dont remember I have seen or heard of this word before.
II. I have seen or heard of this word before, but I dont 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: _________ (translation or explanation in L1)
37
5.2. Depth dimension

The depth dimension indicates a comprehensive word model which
includes three categories of knowledge aspects listed as follows:
x form orthographic, phonological and morphological aspects
x semantic association antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and gradation
x 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 vocabulary 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 increases 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 author, 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
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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 (Nation 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 difficulty in extrapolating a learners 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 second test is the Controlled Productive Vocabulary Levels Test
(CPVLT) (Laufer/Nation 1999) which will be discussed in the productive 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 pseudowords. This allows adjustment to the scores for test-takers responding
Yes to pseudo-words. This simple format makes it possible to administer on computer, such as orthographic tests of X-Lex (Meara/
Milton 2005) and Y_Lex (Meara/Miralpeix 2006), and the phonological test of Aural_Lex (Milton/Hopkins 2005). The Yes/No test captures multiple degrees of vocabulary knowledge. A response of Yes
may indicate either recognition of the form or knowing the meaning
39
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 correctly spelled target words from three distractors. The distractors are
created to resemble the target words both phonetically and orthographically. 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 adverb 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 sentence completion task where context is provided for the prompt word,
as in the following:
ASSUME
Noun
Verb
Adjective
Adverb
He made an ____________ that she likes meat.

He can _____________ that she likes meat.
He had an ____________ idea that she likes meat.
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 contextualized 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 vocabulary 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
stimulate
educate
Noun
stimulation
Verb
stimulate
Adjective
stimulating
The task was developed and validated by Ishii (2005) among a group
of Japanese undergraduate students whose proficiency level is intermediate. 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 collocates. Validation of the Word Association Test produced a high reliability of .93 (Read 1998). An example3 is as follows:
BEAUTIFUL
enjoyable expensive
free
loud
education
face
music
weather
The example is from Reads (1998) web-based test <www.lextutor.ca/tests/

associates>).
41
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 Cronbachs
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 Reads 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), because 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
favor
relief
Synonym
help
tell
large
Collocation
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) constructed 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
The quickest way to win a friends trust is to show
that you are able to ....
Hua Zhong
tell
take
keep
a/an
the
joke
secret
truth
The validation was carried out among a group of 56 Danish EFL students from Year 10 to 1st year university students. Results show moderately high reliability of .89 (Revier 2009) and evidence for acceptable criterion prediction validity (Anastasi/Urbina 1997) among students with different proficiency. Revier (2009) claims that the advantage of this format is that the presentation is of a whole collocation
and the correct word order as well as that the collocations are examined 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 multiple 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 learners. 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 degrees of knowing.
43
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. Therefore 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 learners vocabulary size requires two 300-word
essays from each learner. Producing essays of such length is a timeconsuming and demanding task for learners of low language proficiency. 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 infrequent 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 context. It may also be useful to minimise the scope for students producing neutral sentences that do not reflect their command of the word. A
neutral sentence with beautiful would be She is beautiful. The sentence 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 different vocabulary assessment tools.
45
Vocabulary Knowledge
Scale (Wesche/Paribakht
1996)
Two versions of revised
unidimensional VKS
(adapted from DAnna et
al. 1991; Dale 1965;
Waring 2002; Wesche/
Paribakht 1996)
Vocabulary Levels Test
(Nation 1983; Schmitt et
al. 2001)
X_Lex (Meara/Milton
2005)
Y_Lex (Meara/Miralpeix
2006)
Aural_Lex (Milton/Hopkins 2005)
Form recognition (Webb
2005, 2009)
Contextualized morphological aspect test
(Schmitt/ Zimmerman
2002)
Decontextualized morphological aspect test (Ishii/
Schmitt 2009)
Word Association Test (8option by Read 1995,
1998; 6-option by
Schoonen/ Verhallen
2008)
CONTRIX (Revier 2009)
COLLEX (Gyllstad 2009)
R&P R&P
Reading
comprehension
Register
Frequency
Collocation
Morphological
aspect
Semantic
association
Phonetic form
Orthographic
form
Meaning
Table 1. Vocabulary knowledge tests and their corresponding construct.
R
R
R
R
46
Hua Zhong
Reading
comprehension
Register
Frequency
Collocation
Morphological
aspect
Semantic
association
Phonetic form
Orthographic
form
Meaning
Table 1.(cont.)
COLLMATCH (Gyllstad
R
R
R
2009)
VLT controlled productive
version (Laufer/Nation
P
P
P
R
Y
1999)
Lexical Frequency Profile
P
P
P
P
P
(Laufer/Nation 1995)
Lex30 (Meara/Fitzpatrick
P
P
P
2000)
Sentence writing (adapted
from Wesche/Paribakht
P
P
P
P
P
1996)
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 Henriksens (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 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. It is found that receptive learning contributes more to receptive knowledge, whereas pro-
47
ductive learning more likely leads to increase in productive knowledge (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 significantly greater increase in productive knowledge. His second experiment investigated the effectiveness of these tasks when different time
lengths were allocated. Results showed that productive learning outperformed receptive learning in promoting productive vocabulary
knowledge.
In Webbs (2009) later study, the effectiveness of receptive and
productive word pair tasks was compared among a group of 62 Japanese 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 knowledge.
In practice, both receptive and productive tasks should be used
for teaching vocabulary. However, teachers could use receptive vocabulary 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 vocabulary 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 advanced learners who can cope with university study and assignment
tasks with their existing proficiency level were less motivated to further 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 knowledge.
Research suggests that motivation influences a learners selfregulating capacity which directly influences the involvement in vocabulary 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
teachers 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 required for diagnostic purposes to detect which aspects of word knowledge require further development. Depending on the needs for assessment and the time constraints of the classroom instruction, different 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 words 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 situation, 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 effective in demonstrating learners weaknesses of using words productively in context.
49
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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 learners mental
lexicon system (see Sthr 2009).
Limited attention has been given to the nature of word knowledge, particularly the various dimensions of word properties that affect 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 words written form orthography, morphology, and word length that impact
on L2 word learnability.
58
Chen-Chun Lin
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, listened, 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 frequent 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 forgotten 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 words
pronounceability, orthography, length, morphology, synformy (similarity of lexical forms), grammar (part of speech), and semantic features (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 second 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 words 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 effortlessly if their phonological and orthographic patterns are similar to
the learners first language. In short, if the word is shorter, highly imageable, acoustically familiar, easily pronounceable, and phonotactically regular, we may assume this L2 word can be learned easily
based on Ellis and Beatons findings.
Other L2 vocabulary studies have shown that grammatical aspects such as word class and derivational morphology are problematic
features in learning (see Alderson/Clapham/Steel 1997; Schmitt/Zimmerman 2002). Schmitt and Meara (1997) examined how knowledge
of word associations and grammatical suffix change over one academic 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 cognates were easier to learn but not easier to be forgotten than abstract
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Chen-Chun Lin
words and noncognates. Word frequency, however, was reported having almost no effect on performance. The results support Carters
(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 knowledge. 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 accurately (Ryan 1997). Spelling provides a visible representation of phonological 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 individual 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 acquiring 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 learners 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
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 Verhoeven and van Leeuwe (2009) investigated the growth of worddecoding skills with 2,819 Dutch children in three orthographical patterns: (1) regular consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words; (2) complex monosyllabic words with consonant clusters in immediately preceding a vowel and immediately following a vowel positions; and (3)
polysyllabic words. The findings suggested a Dutch orthography development order and showed children were most successful at decoding CVC patterns, and then monosyllabic words with consonant clusters; polysyllables were the least successful word group to be decoded
by the participants. The results also suggested that the childrens ability 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, affects 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 describe how orthographic depth affects phonological decoding procedures across writing systems. In shallow orthographies, phonological
code is systematically organized in working memory through one-toone letter-to-sound translation, as is the case in Spanish, SerboCroatian, and Korean Hangul. The grapheme-phoneme correspondences for these languages are regular, and thus transparent. In contrast, in less transparent deep orthographies, phonological code may
be gained only after a word has been identified, depending on the
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Chen-Chun Lin
learners existing lexical knowledge. In other words, orthographic

depth refers to the degree of lexical involvement in obtaining a words
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 phonological transparency and this limits systematic one-to-one letter-tosound 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 indicates 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 structures. Linguistically, two units of speech sounds are the phoneme and
the syllable. Some phonemes are called consonants (C) and some are
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 differences 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 similarity 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) sensitivity 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 alphabetic 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 experiences 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 Kodas (2010) more recent study also supported 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 phonological 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).
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4. Morphology
Morphology is the study of various parts of word form in language.
The explicit understanding of word structure is morphological awareness (MA). The units of decomposition in MA are affixes and root
words. Words are made up of morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaning-bearing units. Morphemes serve both a grammatical function 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 et
al. 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 essential 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 prefixes 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 incrementally 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 different 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 easily within this model. The levels were decided according to eight criteria: 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 acquired 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 undergraduate nonnative-English-speaking students productive classchanging 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 members. The finding further showed that the participants increasingly
gained noun and verb derivatives at each stage of a four-stage developmental scale, but not so with adjective and adverb forms. The finding was consistent with Ellis and Beatons (1993) claim that part of
speech is a strong determinant of a words learnability.
67
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 vocabulary size. Two types of tasks, receptive measures and productive
measures, were used to examine the knowledge of inflectional suffixes, class-maintaining affixes, and class-changing affixes. The results indicated that Japanese learners performed better on the classmaintaining affixes and inflectional suffixes in receptive word segmentation tasks. The findings showed that the accuracy for inflectional 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 elicitation. 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 morphological awareness.
5. Word length
Information about whether orthographic structure affects the learnability 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 childrens 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 remembered 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 tipof-the-tongue (TOT) state may explain this phenomenon (see Aitchison/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 activation (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 produced in partial words with 25 English-speaking learners of Spanish.
The participants were given 24 concrete noun word-picture pairs including different word lengths. They were two-, three-, four-, and
five-syllable target words. The results showed that the learners produced 69% partial words and 31% complete words, and a high percentage 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
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49% more partial words than complete words. The results also indicated 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 Barcrofts (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 frequency, (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 transparency (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 certain 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 exercises or activities requiring more mental effort on the learners 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 processing 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 Hulstijns (2001)
Involvement Load Hypothesis and produced close findings (see Hul-
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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 exposure to the word) had an important effect on vocabulary learning, arguing 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 activities: 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 listeners have a more extensive vocabulary under their control.
One of the main difficulties facing L2 learners is the vast number 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 optimal 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 language occurs incidentally via extensive reading (Krashen 1989). A
major concern within this view is that acquiring new words via extensive 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 reading comprehension is contingent upon knowing around 95% to 98% of
the words in a written text (Hirsh/Nation 1992; Hu/Nation 2000; Nation 2001). Empirical studies investigating word learning via extensive 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 Zimmermans (1997) study. The results showed that L2
vocabulary retention is higher for students who complete written vocabulary activities after a reading task than for students who do without 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 vocabulary 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
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pushed output and negotiation without pushed output are equally effective 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. learnergenerated original context) facilitated more efficient incidental vocabulary 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 condition using four texts and various vocabulary exercises. The results
found that tasks that required students to practice new words in postreading vocabulary focused exercises (i.e. reading plus group) led to
significantly better retention of vocabulary than when students participated 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 retention 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 Lockharts (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 shortterm memory but rather by the shallowness or depth with which it is
83
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 degree 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 Processing Hypothesis (Craik/Lockhart 1972) which is assumed to be the
key to word learning and retention, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) proposed 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 composed 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 retention in a second language are contingent upon a tasks 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.
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Table 1. Three components of involvement (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).

Components
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 Absent (0)

the meaning of unknown words in a task 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 required 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 students 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 dictionary 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 prominence (i.e. absent, moderate and strong), search is not conceptualised
as the relative degree of cognitive processing; instead, it is either absent (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 marginal glosses). Furthermore, search can occur when the direction of
translation is from the L1 into the L2 or vice versa.
85
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 meanings, 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). Moderate evaluation requires recognising differences between words,
whereas strong evaluation involves making a decision as to how additional words will work in combination with the new word in an original 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 tasks 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 effective the task is in promoting vocabulary acquisition.
2.5. Research on the Involvement Load Hypothesis

Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) validated the Involvement Load Hypothesis via two parallel experiments involving advanced Dutch and Hebrew-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
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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 investigating the effect of the Involvement Load Hypothesis in terms of vocabulary learning. Experiment 1 compared the performance of 64
adult ESL learners from a range of countries at two different proficiency 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 represent 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 Laufers (2001) hypothe-
87
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 retention in a L2 are contingent upon a tasks 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). Participants 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 Hulstijns (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, Folse (2006) compared the effect of different written vocabulary exercises (i.e. fill-in-the-blank versus original sentence writing) 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 learnergenerated sentence. However, contrary to the predictions of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the results revealed that three fill-in-theblank 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 exposure 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.
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3. The current study

A few studies have tested Laufer and Hulstijns (2001) Involvement
Load Hypothesis and produced similar findings that the higher taskinduced 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), however, 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 vocabulary 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 classroom 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 activities: 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 studys research question is:
How does exercise condition affect initial learning and retention of
new vocabulary?
89
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 outside the classroom. Participants recruited in the current study are considered 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 experiment 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 sentence writing (OSW) as condition 3. These conditions represent different involvement loads as indicated in Table 2.
3.2.1. Condition 1 (One multiple-choice exercise)
According to Laufer and Hulstijns (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, this task condition would induce a moderate need because
this need was externally imposed by the task, rather than by the students. 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 provided to decide which word best fits the given context in the multiplechoice question. In terms of task-induced involvement load, condition
1 therefore induced moderate need (value = 1), no search (value = 0)
90
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 exposures
Moderate need (1)

No search (0)
Moderate evaluation (1)
1+0+1=2
One original sentence 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 Hulstijns (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 completion times are held constant across tasks in the research design
(Ellis 1995; Folse 2006; Webb 2007). The current study sets to address this issue. A key concern is to find out how many multiplechoice 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 finishing 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-
91
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, however, 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 generate 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 Hypothesis (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
92
begin with, the researcher perused the vocabulary study list for senior
high school Year 12 students and identified 60 potential low frequency 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 students 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 treatment 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
93
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 considered during the development of the materials. The presentation order of
the three word groups and of the three conditions was therefore randomised. This means that, within any one of the six combinations, there
were also six possible orderings. Based on these combinations of conditions, target word groups, and orderings, 36 different versions of booklets 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 Knowledge Scale (Paribakht/Wesche 1993), were used to assess participants
94
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 selfperceived and demonstrated knowledge of specific words in written
form. Each score indicates the following level of vocabulary demonstrated knowledge: 0 (not familiar), 1 (correct English synonym or
Chinese translation is given), and 2 (target word is used in a meaningful sentence). Each condition could receive a score of 0, 1, or 2 depending 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 know this word

I dont
I can use this
(Please provide a
Points
know
word in a good
translation in Chinese
awarded
this word
example sentence
or an English synonym)
family
fruit
constrain
1
We always have
plenty of fruit
after dinner.
Paribakht and Wesches (1993) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale is considered 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 vocabulary 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-
95
ment session was approximately 40 minutes. Participants were advised 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 unannounced immediate post-test, designed to measure their initial learning, was distributed. All copies of the immediate post-test were collected following the test. Two weeks later, the participants received
the unannounced delayed post-test, which was a parallel test displaying the same test items but in a different presentation order, to measure 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, interrater reliability using Pearsons r was calculated. Pearsons 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 Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 17.0 (SPSS 17.0). Probability coefficient (p), which can range from 0 to 1, measures significance. A significance level was set to be 0.05 (Drnyei 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
96
current study, the participants are subjected to repeated measures, in

which the same subjects are used for each treatment Therefore, repeated measures ANOVA is adopted. In order to validate repeated
measures factor ANOVA, Mauchlys 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 ones findings, which helps to determine whether a statistically significant difference is a difference of practical concern
(Mackey/Gass 2005). Effect size conveys whether an observed difference is substantively important. This is in contrast to a statistical significance 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 Cohens 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 condition 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 Cohens d are also reported in the results.
97
The descriptive statistics for the immediate post-test of 131 participants 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 posttest. 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
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 effective than the word being practised with making one original sentence. 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 retention. To ensure the accuracy of the results from the repeated measures
ANOVA, the study used Mauchlys 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
98
measures conditions as in the current study. If Mauchlys 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, Mauchlys test should be non-significant (i.e. p >.05). In
the current study, the output (see Table 6) in SPSS reported the significance value (.196) of Mauchlys test which is more than the critical value of .05.
Table 6. Mauchlys test for the scores of the immediate post-test.
Within
subjects
effect
Condition
Mauchlys
W
.975
Approx.
Chi-Square
3.263
Epsilon
Greenhouse- Huynh- LowerGeisser
Feldt
bound
df
Sig
.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 corrections 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 exercise condition on the immediate post-test, F (2, 260) = 123.662, p <
.001. The results suggest that initial vocabulary learning was significantly affected by the exercise conditions. This means that each exercise condition tested was effective in terms of initial learning. However, the main ANOVA test does not inform us how conditions differed from each other. An ANOVA of contrast variables was conducted 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.
99

Table 7. ANOVA for effect of exercise condition on initial vocabulary learning.
Source
Df
Type III SS
Mean Square
Condition
449.807
224.903
123.662*
260
472.860
1.819
Error
*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
Effect Size
Conditions 1 versus 2
1038.96
1038.96
142.05*
.95
6.65
6.65
0.96
.09
879.38
879.38
111.69*
.78
153
1204.62
7.87
Error
*p< .001
As shown in Table 8, there was a significant difference between conditions 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 practicing 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 multiplechoice question. This again suggests that the quantity of exposure to
new vocabulary would be more of an impact than the quality of exposure in terms of initial learning.
Effect size is a measure that gives an indication of the strength
of ones findings, which helps to determine whether a statistically
significant difference is a difference of practical concern. Based on the
100
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
Cohens d (Cohen 1992) was calculated to provide an objective measure 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 considered 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 multiplechoice 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 surprising 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. Corroborating with Folses (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 supports 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 components of learner involvement, namely need, search, and evaluation. 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 vocabulary learning than practising words in multiple-choice question as
it induces higher involvement. This suggests that the quality of expo-
101
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 produced an outcome which was similar to that of Folses (2006) experiment, 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 retention 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 condition 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 posttest were considerably lower, as shown in Figure 1.
102
Table 9. Descriptive statistics for longer-term retention by exercise condition.

Condition
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 condition 3 (.73). A plausible reason is that the elapsing of time may have
lessened the effect of exercise condition on retention of new vocabulary, 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.
103
Mean
condition 3
condition 2
condition 1
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. Mauchlys test (W= .939, p>.05.) indicated that the assumption 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 different effect on retention of new words when the delayed post-test was
administered two weeks after the treatment. Because ANOVA revealed no significant effect of these three conditions, ANOVA of contrast variables and effect size were therefore not necessary to be conducted. 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 encountered.
104
Table 10. ANOVA for effect of exercise condition on longer-term retention.

Source
Df
Type III SS
Mean Square
Condition
2.204
1.102
1.564
260
183.130
0.704
Error
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 conditions, 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 Hulstijns
(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 vocabulary 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).
105
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
Insignificant
The 2nd least effective The most effective
It appears that tasks providing more chances of exposure to new vocabulary 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 Folses
(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 recycling 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 posttest, minor differences between scores of condition 2 (.65) and 3 (.73)
are noted. These might suggest that tasks, though triggering lower
106
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 superficial or passive use of vocabulary, especially when compared to writing original sentences. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) claim that multiplechoice questions induce less involvement load than writing original
sentences as measured by their involvement index, which rates activities as strong (2), moderate (1), or absent (0) on three essential components of learner involvement, namely need, search, and evaluation. With this index, multiple-choice question exercises in the current 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 Hulstijns (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 finding of the immediate post-test where it was found that learners were
able to better retain and produce a higher number of meaningful sentences 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 studys findings suggest that multiple-choice question exercises may in fact induce a higher involvement load than would be suggested by the Involvement Load Hy-
107
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 processing 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 contribution to vocabulary learning.
Comparing the quality and quantity of exposure to new words, a
crucial question in understanding vocabulary learning is whether retention 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 (condition 3), which requires more mental effort as claimed in the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer/Hulstijn 2001).
This highlights a key factor to explain the effectiveness of condition 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 involved in the learning of vocabulary (Dempster 1987; Joe 1995; Nation 2001; Webb 2007).
108
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 involvement and word retrieval on word-form learning might differ
from their effect on learning word meaning. In order to verify the reliability of the Involvement Load Hypothesis and word retrieval more
broadly, it would be important to examine different aspects of vocabulary learning. Future studies would benefit from investigating the effect 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 aspects of quality or depth of vocabulary knowledge, especially for the
purpose of tracking the early development of specific words. However, 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 specific information regarding how involvement load and word retrieval
contribute to the development of both receptive and productive vocabulary 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
109
what they do with it in terms of vocabulary learning. This would suggest 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 activities, 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 Nation (2001), research has been conducted on the importance of word
repetition to improve the learning and retention of new words. Dempster (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 attention 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 minutes 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 repetitions are spread across a weeks 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.
110
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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-
The booklet provided to participants included instructions in Chinese.
114
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 vocabulary 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 translation
Part of speech
(un)countable
()
banquet
/noun
/countable
conceit
/noun
/uncountable
missile
/noun
/countable
skull
/noun
/countable
1. The ________flew over a long distance and exploded when it hit

the target.
(A) conceit (B) missile (C) skull (D) banquet
115
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 translation
Part of speech
(un)countable
()
banquet
/noun
/countable
conceit
/noun
/uncountable
missile
/noun
/countable
skull
/noun
/countable
116
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 language (L2) teachers and researchers. While there is some suggestion
that explicit learning of vocabulary may be responsible for the majority 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 vocabulary learning (Hunt/Beglar 2005; Waring/Takaki 2003), with
recognition that vocabulary development through reading may account for most vocabulary learning, particularly beyond high frequency words (see Laufer 1994).
One line of enquiry has examined the role of vocabulary knowledge 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 learners receptive 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 improvements 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 teaching 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 competency in the L2 (Hinkel 2006). There is evidence that lexical competence is a strong predictor of language proficiency in both a second
language (ESL) and a foreign language (EFL) context (Sthr 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 interest in the role of incidental vocabulary learning through reading in
developing vocabulary knowledge (see Hunt/Beglar 2005; Waring/Takaki 2003), there is also an awareness that explicit learning of
vocabulary may be required, particularly in EFL contexts where exposure 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 extensive 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 development (Rott 2007).
Webb (2009) conducted an experimental study with EFL students 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.
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2.2. Explicit instruction

Lee (2003) proposes the hypothesis that systematic and explicit vocabulary 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 instruction 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. Lees (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
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and the test may affect learning outcome. The type of task in L2 vocabulary 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 obtained 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 narrow 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 vocabulary 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 Goldsteins (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 Muncies (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.
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4. The current study

There is mounting evidence that L2 lexical development plays an important role in successful second and foreign language acquisition.
The important role of vocabulary instruction in L2 vocabulary learning and retention has been highlighted in studies adopting a receptive
perspective (Rott 2007; Webb 2008; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001; Zimmerman 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 examine: (1) the relationship between the learners vocabulary input
(reading) and output (writing); and (2) the effects of explicit instruction 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 undergraduates 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 English at the first year of junior high school; thus the participants had
123
studied English for a minimum of seven years. Their English proficiency was an intermediate level based on the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). The GEPT was developed in 1999, commissioned by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, in order to provide
individuals with a gauge of their English language proficiency (Roever/Pan 2008).
4.2. Target words

15 target words selected from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000) and occurring in a selected reading text, Green Architecture (EZ TALK Magazine 2010), were used in the study. The AWL
consists of 570 word families, and is divided by Coxhead into categories ranging from the most frequent, Sublist 1, to the least frequent,
Sublist 10, based on the frequency of occurrence in Coxheads (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 because (1) the students are more often familiar with technical vocabulary 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).
124
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 receptive test was designed by the research team and required the participants 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 productive test was a revised version of the controlled productive vocabulary test (Laufer/Nation 1999). In Laufer and Nations design, initial
letters of a target word were provided as a cue to help students complete 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
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(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 writing task (see Appendix 1).
4.4.2. Writing frame
The writing frame, adapted from Lee and Muncie (2006), was designed 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 Laufers (1990, 1994) and Nations (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 meaning, 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 Barcrofts (2008) study. For example, in the sentence 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 participating university who administered the vocabulary tests, the treat-
126
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 instruction plus reading) and the control group (C) (no treatment).
The vocabulary receptive test and the productive test were administered to identify the degree of uniformity across the four treatment groups with regard to prior knowledge of the target words. The
receptive vocabulary test was collected from the students prior to distributing the productive vocabulary test. This was to remove the possibility 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 requiring 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
127
related to their subsequent writing tasks. For group E3 (vocabulary

instruction plus reading), students received the same vocabulary instruction as E1 and then the same procedure as E2. For the control
group (no treatment), the students were not pre-taught the target vocabulary 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 (Drnyei 2007). The results in this study were assumed to be statistically significant and indicated 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 separately 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 independent evaluator until consensus was reached. To show the degree of
128
agreement among raters, inter-rater reliability using Pearsons r was

calculated. Pearsons 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) (Drnyei
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 determine which contrasts are significant by computing a post-hoc test
(Drnyei 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.
129
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 ones 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 Cohens d,
using the means and standard deviations of two groups (Cohen 1992).
Cohens d indicated the effect size for each vocabulary learning treatment, 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 significance for these results was measured at the .05 level at F (3, 138) =
1.697, p = .170. Statistical significance is measured by a probability
130
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 participants 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.
Cronbachs Alpha is a measure of internal consistency and reliability.
Values for Cronbachs Alpha range between 0 and +1, and internal
consistency estimates for a well-developed test should approach 0.80
(Drnyei 2007). The reliability analysis for the current study indicates
acceptable reliability (Cronbachs 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 Drnyei (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 distributed or not (Wilcox 2003).
One solution appears to be [soldiering] on pretty much just assuming 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 assumed to work well in the following statistical analysis procedures.
131
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 normally distributed in E2 (.029) and E3 (.000), near normal in the control 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).
E1
(N = 38)
Receptive Test
Productive Test
Partially Produced
Fully Produced
E2
Receptive Test
(N = 37)
Productive Test
Partially Produced
Fully Produced
E3
Receptive Test
(N = 33)
Productive Test
Partially Produced
Fully Produced
Control
Receptive Test
(N = 34)
Productive Test
Partially Produced
Fully Produced
Note: * = normally distributed
Statistic
.105
.131
.169
.116
.149
.153
.229
.121
.245
.217
.211
.214
.120
.145
.538
.538
Df
38
38
38
38
37
37
37
37
33
33
33
33
34
34
34
34
Sig.
.200
.099
.008*
.200
.036*
.029*
.000*
.185
.000*
.000*
.001*
.001*
.200
.066
.000*
.000*
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
132
deviations (SD) of the four vocabulary learning conditions (i.e. vocabulary 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 learning 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 treatment.
Table 2. Descriptive statistics for use of new words in writing.
Condition
New learned word
Mean*
SD
Ratio
(P:F)**
(1.2.0)
Partial knowledge
38
1.73
1.54
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
Partial knowledge
33
1.15
1.12
(1:2.3)
E3 (vocabulary
Full knowledge
2.64
1.06
instruction +
reading)
Overall
3.79
1.14
Partial knowledge
34
0.06
0.24
(1:1)
Control (no treatFull knowledge
0.06
0.24
ment)
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)
E1 (vocabulary
instruction)
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 target 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
133
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 received 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 vocabulary 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 (control group). The results suggest that students appear to be more likely
to use a target word correctly (i.e. fully produced) in writing for treatment 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
Lees (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 words 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 spelling, .06 for meaning, and .29 for part of speech.
134
Table 3. Descriptive statistics for use of partially learned words in writing.

Spelling
Meaning
Part of speech
Condition
N
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 writing 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
135
who received vocabulary instruction performed significantly better in

terms of using target words in the subsequent writing task than students in the E2 group who received the reading passage, E3 who received both vocabulary instruction and the reading passage, and students in the control group who did not receive any treatment, p < .05.
Table 4. Multiple comparisons between treatments (LSD Post Hoc Test).
E1: vocabulary
E2: Reading
E3: vocabulary instruction
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 performed 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 performed 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 significantly better than the reading only treatment in terms of students
productive use of target words in the writing task.
5.6. Effect size

Cohens 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 degree of the association strength between two groups of mean scores
(Kirk 1996). Cohen (1992) suggests that an effect size (r) of .2 is considered small, an effect size (r) of .5 is considered medium, and an ef-
136
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
E1 versus E2
E1 versus E3
E2 versus E3
E1 versus Control
E2 versus Control
E3 versus Control
Effect size (r)

0.24
0.21
0.03
0.6
0.52
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
E1 (vocabulary instruction)
E2 (reading)
E3 (vocabulary instruction + reading)
E4 (no treatment)
Effect size (r) of fully and partially

produced target words in writing
0.47
0.53
0.56
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 academic words in their writing. Many studies, including the present
137
study, show that both learning approaches are beneficial in terms of

increasing students use of target words (see e.g. Webb 2008; Zahar/Cobb/Spada 2001; Zimmerman 1997). The results of the present
study indicate that the students in experimental groups had significantly 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 vocabulary 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 vocabulary 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 teachers use of interactive elicitation of
vocabulary during instruction, which was absent in the reading activity. Lee (2003) also reports that use of newly learned productive vocabulary increased significantly in an immediate writing task after
vocabulary instruction.
Laufer and Shmueli (1997) claim that incidental vocabulary acquisition will hardly occur if unknown words are not noticed or not
processed deeply; thus, the way new vocabulary is presented to learners is critical. They also indicate that focus-oriented methods of presenting new vocabulary are more effective than context-oriented reading methods. Their result was similar to the finding of the present
study that specific vocabulary instruction is more effective than reading 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-
138
vestigated the combined effects of reading and vocabulary instruction

on vocabulary use in writing for secondary ESL learners with multigrade and multi-L1, found that 13.19% of recognised vocabulary is
productive after reading while 63.62% of recognised vocabulary becomes productive vocabulary after the addition of explicit target vocabulary instruction. Lees 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 vocabulary instruction and reading is not more beneficial than reading only
for students productive use of target words. This differs from Lee and
Muncies (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 indicate 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 students who received vocabulary instruction plus a reading passage used
more than twice as words correctly than partially incorrectly (ratio 2.3
139
to 1.0). This result suggests that both vocabulary instruction and reading 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 productive 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 effective 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 productive 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 representation of this idea. The main purpose of the VKS is to assess a persons vocabulary knowledge, from receptive to productive. The VKS
has five levels of vocabulary knowledge which indicate progressive
degrees of word knowledge.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
I dont remember having seen this word before.

I have seen this word before but I dont know what it means.
I have seen this word before and I think it means ________. (synonym
or translation)
I know this word. It means __________. (synonym or translation)
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 vocabulary, 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
140
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 vocabulary 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 present study suggests that both explicit vocabulary instruction and reading 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 learning to be a by-product of limited quantities of reading, particularly in a
foreign language learning situation. Rather, apart from purely contextualised learning, teachers should devote themselves to creating various 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 contexts, 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 teachers should be to concentrate on which words are to be studied. Ac-
141
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 academic 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 vocabulary for the present study, which was aimed to meet the participants 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 confidence in later use of these words, and may contribute to both receptive
and productive vocabulary acquisition. In order to promote L2 learners 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 allows 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 appropriate words, and these words are usually in learners receptive
vocabulary knowledge but not yet fully part of their productive vocabulary (Corson 1997). As a result, L2 teachers may manipulate a
combination of receptive and productive tasks to foster students lexical competence and general language skills, because receptive vocabulary learning appears to gain more comprehension, while productive
vocabulary learning enables students to employ greater numbers of
taught words in their writing (Webb 2009).
142
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 further the behaviour of learners with regard to productive use of partially and fully learned words.
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147
Appendix 1: Reading text (first paragraph only shown)

Please read the following text Green Architecture and pay attention to underlined words. You have 10 minutes.
With all the bad news about the environment these days, green architecture 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 building is green? If its muggy without air conditioning and dark without
artificial lighting, then its a traditional non-green building. A green
building, on the other hand, is comfortable by day even without electricity 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]
148
Appendix 2: Writing frame

Instructions: This is a writing exercise. You have 50 minutes to complete 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
Paragraph Two
Paragraph Three
What are some environmental problems

happening now?
Why?
How will you build

your ideal green architecture? Where?
Will the building be

for public or personal use?
How can we improve our environment based on the

problems you mention above?
Describe the functions of your ideal

green architecture.
Give your comments and conclusion 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 proportion 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 consistently 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 tertiary 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
152
Warren Matsuoka
from L1 texts such as books, newspapers, journal articles, and transcripts of university lectures and business meetings. This chapter investigates the challenges EFL learners face when reading academic
texts and signals how their situation may be ameliorated through corpus-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 reading comprehension including factors involved in vocabulary acquisition 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 identifying 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 demonstrated consistently that, although reading comprehension is affected
by multiple factors such as the readers 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 inferences) and how to apply them, it is more strongly related to vocabulary 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, compared 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 successful reading. For example, significant correlations were found between vocabulary tests and reading scores of L2 learners by Laufer
Searching for the Right Words
153
(1991) and even higher correlations were revealed between vocabulary 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 predictor of reading comprehension, the next logical step may be to investigate 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 Websters 3rd International Dictionary
(Goulden/Nation/Read 1990) as well as the extensive research conducted 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 language is minimal, the 20,000 word families may be studied in manageable amounts and at different phases of language learning as well
154
Warren Matsuoka
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 teaching 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 vocabulary, 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; OKeeffe/McCarthy/Carter
2007) generally agree that beginners of English language study should
focus on learning high frequency words which consist of approximately 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 teaching (Nation 1990). The most prominent high frequency word lists in
the field of TESOL are Wests (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 intend 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
155
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 extensive 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 Academic 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 particular needs of students (Li/Zhang 2009). According to Strevens
(1973) and Flowerdew (1993), because technical words, unlike academic 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 vocabulary 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 vocabulary 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; linguistics: 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 tokens, 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 meanings will remain classed as high frequency and academic respectively rather
than as wholly technical words as a significant number of these words maintain 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 frequency 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 apparent 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 coverages 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
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(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 unknown 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 research 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/RavenhorstKalovski 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 vocabulary 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 research will be discussed as repetition types may involve processing of
word meaning (e.g. noticing, retrieval), an aspect of vocabulary acquisition 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 learners interest, the availability of context clues), there is no set number of repetitions of a word which will
guarantee its learning (Huckin/Coady 1999). However, based on research 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 unrelated 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 learning (Bloom/Shuell 1981; Dempster 1987) has found that spaced repetition (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 weeks time.
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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 subsequent 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 learners 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 reproduced 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 appeared with the publication of Brights (1588 cited in Fries 1950)
Characterie: An Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Character, 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 Brights (1588) word count, many of the word lists compiled in the 19th century were made for use by stenographers (Bontrager 1991; Fries 1950). One of the most significant word lists from
this period is Kaedings (1898 cited in Fries 1950) Haufigkeitsworterbuch 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 because it established a standard of methodology that has been used ever
since and with little variation (Fries 1950; Nisbet 1960); the methodological 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 purpose of developing new writing systems such as those for stenographers as mentioned above and also for the blind (for an example see
Knowles 1904 cited in Fries 1950), most word frequency investigations 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, vocabulary, writing, and foreign language studies, and much of the work
done on written (i.e. correspondence) or printed (e.g. books and newspapers) 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 Thorndikes series of word lists
were published, the first of these being The Teachers 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 English 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. According 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
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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 improve 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 Teachers Word Book of 30,000 Words
Thorndikes most comprehensive word list was the word book he coauthored with Lorge titled A Teachers Word Book of 30,000 Words
(Thorndike/Lorge 1944) which was a compilation of four previous
word counts: 1) A Teachers 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 instructions 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 Lorges (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 categorized 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 encountered in authentic printed texts (Fries 1950; Nisbet 1960). Michael West was to later employ Palmers system of headwords and
Lorges (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, Wests (1953) A
General Service List of English Words (GSL) is a list of approximately 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 incorporated 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
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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 example to learners at the beginner stage while those with low percentages (such as meanings 1 and 4) may best be taught at a more advanced stage:
(1) (amusement, childrens play)
Fun and games
Its not serious; its just a game
(2) (with the idea of competition, e.g., cards,
football, etc.)
A game of football
Indoor games; out-door games
(3) (a particular contest)
We won, six games to three
I played a poor game
Playing a losing game (10.5%)
(4) (games = athletic contest)
Olympic Games
Note: As with many of the entries in the GSL, the percentages do not add up
due to minor meanings having been omitted.
GAME
638
9%
38%
23%
8%
to 100
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
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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 published in the early 1950s, is that it understandably does not contain upto-date lexis such as CD, DVD, television, video and website
(Hanciolu/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 comparatively 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; Hanciolu 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 subfield 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 frequency 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 preelectronic corpus, the Survey of English Usage (SEU) Corpus, begun
in 1959 and completed in the late 1960s (Kennedy 1998).
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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 published 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 analyses 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 Corpuss 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 Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) Corpus the identically-structured BritishEnglish 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, poetry, 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.
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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 regardless 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 covering 1.4% of tokens in a similar-sized corpus of fiction texts (Coxhead
2000). The fact that the AWL, compared to its predecessor the University Word List (UWL) (Xue/Nation 1984), provides slightly more
coverage of the corpus (10% as opposed to the UWLs 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
Wards studies which aimed to construct word lists to aid L2 engineering 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-
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word corpus of first-year undergraduate multi-disciplinary engineering

texts (specifically, engineering mechanics, engineering thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, mechanics of materials, and statistics and probability), 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 engineering (engineering materials, engineering mechanics, fluid mechanics),
three specialist engineering (chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering), 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 engineering-related texts but all the texts from the sciences and humanities
disciplines as well though there was almost no difference in coverage 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 mechanics) 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 undergraduate 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).
Wards new word list, created out of a 271,000-word Engineering 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
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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 Wards EngList would also involve knowing all its word family members so it is assumed in knowing the word accept the reader
would also know its inflected (accepts, accepted, accepting) and derived 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. Wards
(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 knowledge of English grammar is often required to understand inflected
forms (e.g. -ed, -ing) and distinguish their various uses; and 4) distributional 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 opposed to the AWLs 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 explicitly 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 language; 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 provide teachers and their learners with selected vocabulary items to inform choices made in and out of the classroom, including: (1) the vocabulary learning goals for particular learners; (2) the order of acquisition 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
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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, academic adjustment, and indigenous language revitalization. He has published in Reading in a Foreign Language and Revue Franaise de Linguistique Applique, 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 Education 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 vocabulary acquisition. The research reported in this volume was undertaken 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 vocabulary 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 Social Work, University of Sydney. She has previously taught English as
a Foreign Language at high school level in China and has tutored Second Language Acquisition in the Master of Education (TESOL) program 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 acquisition, vocabulary knowledge assessment and English language testing. Hua Zhong has published her research in the University of Sydney
Papers in TESOL.
Linguistic Insights
This series aims to promote specialist language studies in the elds

of linguistic theory and applied linguistics, by publishing volumes that
focus on specic aspects of language use in one or several languages
and provide valuable insights into language and communication research. A cross-disciplinary approach is favoured and most European
languages are accepted.
The series includes two types of books:
Monographs featuring in-depth studies on special aspects of language theory, language analysis or language teaching.
Collected papers assembling papers from workshops, conferences or symposia.
Each volume of the series is subjected to a double peer-reviewing process.
Vol.
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
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Domain-specic English. Textual Practices across Communities
and Classrooms.
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Conict and Negotiation in Specialized Texts. Selected Papers
of the 2nd CERLIS Conference.
Editorial address:
Prof. Maurizio Gotti
Universit di Bergamo, Facolt di Lingue e Letterature Straniere,

Via Salvecchio 19, 24129 Bergamo, Italy
Fax: 0039 035 2052789, E-Mail: m.gotti@unibg.it
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Variation in Central Modals. A Repertoire of Forms and Types of Usage
in Middle English and Early Modern English.
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Phrases and Phraseology. Data and Descriptions.
187 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906770-08-7 US-ISBN 0-8204-5933-X
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Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts.
Arbitration Texts in Europe.
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Insights into Late Modern English. 2nd edition.
378 pages. 2003, 2007.
ISBN 978-3-03911-257-9 US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8927-8
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Maurizio Gotti
Specialized Discourse. Linguistic Features and Changing Conventions.
351 pages. 2003, 2005.
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Corpora and Discourse.
Vol. 10
Martina Mllering
The Acquisition of German Modal Particles. A Corpus-Based Approach.
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11
David Hart (ed.)

English Modality in Context. Diachronic Perspectives.
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12
Wendy Swanson
Modes of Co-reference as an Indicator of Genre.
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Discursive Strategies in Multicultural Business Meetings.
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Intercultural Aspects of Specialized Communication.
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Academic Discourse. New Insights into Evaluation.
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Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology.
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Judy Noguchi
The Science Review Article. An Opportune Genre in
the Construction of Science.
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Giuseppina Cortese & Anna Duszak (eds)

Identity, Community, Discourse. English in Intercultural Settings.
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Anna Trosborg & Poul Erik Flyvholm Jrgensen (eds)

Business Discourse. Texts and Contexts.
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Christopher Williams
Tradition and Change in Legal English. Verbal Constructions
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English Pronunciation Models: A Changing Scene.
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21
Vol. 22
Christin Abello-Contesse, Rubn Chacn-Beltrn,

M. Dolores Lpez-Jimnez & M. Mar Torreblanca-Lpez (eds)
Age in L2 Acquisition and Teaching.
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Vijay K. Bhatia, Maurizio Gotti, Jan Engberg & Dorothee Heller (eds)
Vagueness in Normative Texts.
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Paul Gillaerts & Maurizio Gotti (eds)

Genre Variation in Business Letters. 2nd printing.
407 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-681-2.
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Ana Mara Hornero, Mara Jos Luzn & Silvia Murillo (eds)
Corpus Linguistics. Applications for the Study of English.
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J. Lachlan Mackenzie & Mara de los ngeles Gmez-Gonzlez (eds)

Studies in Functional Discourse Grammar.
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Debbie G. E. Ho
Classroom Talk. Exploring the Sociocultural Structure of Formal ESL Learning.
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Javier Prez-Guerra, Dolores Gonzlez-lvarez, Jorge L. Bueno-Alonso

& Esperanza Rama-Martnez (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).
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Nicholas Brownlees (ed.)

News Discourse in Early Modern Britain. Selected Papers of CHINED 2004.
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31
Roberta Facchinetti & Matti Rissanen (eds)

Corpus-based Studies of Diachronic English.
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Marina Dossena & Susan M. Fitzmaurice (eds)

Business and Ofcial Correspondence: Historical Investigations.
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Discourse, Ideology and Specialized Communication.
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The Use of English in Institutional and Business Settings.
An Intercultural Perspective.
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Vijay K. Bhatia & Maurizio Gotti (eds)

Explorations in Specialized Genres.
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Modern Approaches to Terminological Theories and Applications.
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Anne Wagner & Sophie Cacciaguidi-Fahy (eds)

Legal Language and the Search for Clarity / Le langage juridique et la qute de clart.
Practice and Tools / Pratiques et instruments.
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Inmaculada Fortanet-Gmez (eds)
Intercultural and International Business Communication:
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Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Dieter Kastovsky, Nikolaus Ritt &

Herbert Schendl (eds)
Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 15002000.
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Marina Dossena & Irma Taavitsainen (eds)

Diachronic Perspectives on Domain-Specic English.
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John Flowerdew & Maurizio Gotti (eds)

Studies in Specialized Discourse.
293 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-178-7
41
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Ken Hyland & Marina Bondi (eds)

Academic Discourse Across Disciplines.
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The Map and the Landscape: Norms and Practices in Genre.
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New Trends in Specialized Discourse Analysis.
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Advances in Medical Discourse Analysis: Oral and Written Contexts.
492 pages. 2006. ISBN 3-03911-185-X US-ISBN 0-8204-8382-6
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Insights into Specialized Translation.
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Evidence-based LSP: Translation, Text and Terminology.
584 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-187-9
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Hao Sun & Dniel Z. Kdr (eds)

Its the Dragons Turn: Chinese Institutional Discourses.
262 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-175-6
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Cristina Surez-Gmez
Relativization in Early English (950-1250): the Position of Relative Clauses.
Vol. 50
Maria Vittoria Calvi & Luisa Chierichetti (eds)

Nuevas tendencias en el discurso de especialidad.
319 pages. 2006. ISBN 978-3-03911-261-6
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Mari Carmen Campoy & Mara Jos Luzn (eds)

Spoken Corpora in Applied Linguistics.
274 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-275-3
51
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Konrad Ehlich & Dorothee Heller (Hrsg.)

Die Wissenschaft und ihre Sprachen.
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Jingyu Zhang
The Semantic Salience Hierarchy Model: The L2 Acquisition of Psych Predicates
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Norman Fairclough, Giuseppina Cortese & Patrizia Ardizzone (eds)

Discourse and Contemporary Social Change.
555 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-276-0
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Jan Engberg, Marianne Grove Ditlevsen, Peter Kastberg & Martin Stegu (eds)
New Directions in LSP Teaching.
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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
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Isabel Balteiro
The Directionality of Conversion in English: A Dia-Synchronic Study.
276 pages. 2007. ISBN 978-3-03911-241-8
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Maria Milagros Del Saz Rubio

English Discourse Markers of Reformulation.
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Sally Burgess & Pedro Martn-Martn (eds)

English as an Additional Language in Research Publication and Communication.
259 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-462-7
61
Vol. 62
Sandrine Onillon
Pratiques et reprsentations de lcrit.
458 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-464-1
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Hugo Bowles & Paul Seedhouse (eds)

Conversation Analysis and Language for Specic Purposes.
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 & Dniel Z. Kdr (eds)

Historical (Im)politeness.
300 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-496-2
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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
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Eva Alcn-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 symtrique et alternances ditransitives.
211 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-609-6
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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.
Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley & Erik Castello (eds)

Corpora for University Language Teachers.
308 pages. 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-639-3
74
Vol. 75
Mara Luisa Prez Caado (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 Guilln-Nieto, Carmen Marimn-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 Garca-Izquierdo & Maria-Jos Esteve (eds)

Linguistic and Translation Studies in Scientic Communication.
317 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0069-8
Vol. 87
Carmen Navarro, Rosa M Rodrguez Abella, Francesca Dalle Pezze

& Renzo Miotti (eds)
La comunicacin 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
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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
Mara Luisa Carri-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 Bal
Les interactions quotidiennes en franais et en anglais.
De lapproche comparative lanalyse 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. Daz Vera & Rosario Caballero (eds)

Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical,
Scientic and Technical Texts.
213 pages. 2009. ISBN 978-3-03911-822-9
Vol. 102
Nuria Edo Marz

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 Gmez-Garca, Iria Pastor-Gmez &

David Tizn-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
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Franoise Salager-Meyer & Beverly A. Lewin

Crossed Words: Criticism in Scholarly Writing?
371 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0049-0.
Vol. 105
Javier Ruano-Garca
Early Modern Northern English Lexis: A Literary Corpus-Based Study.
611 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0058-2
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Rafael Monroy-Casas
Systems for the Phonetic Transcription of English: Theory and Texts.
280 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0059-9
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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
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ngeles Linde Lpez & Rosala Crespo Jimnez (eds)

Professional English in the European context: The EHEA challenge.
374 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-0343-0088-9
Vol. 110
Rosala Rodrguez-Vzquez
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. 112
Forthcoming.
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
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Merja Kyt, 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 cortesa verbal en espaol.
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
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Yvonne Drschel
Lingua Franca English. The Role of Simplication and Transfer.
358 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0432-0
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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
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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-Gmez
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 & Mara Moreno Jan (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: lneas de investigacin 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. 132
Forthcoming.
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 Worlds 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. Gneros discursivos y terminologa.
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. 140143 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. 145
Forthcoming.
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

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Reflecting growth in research interest in second

David Hirsh (ed.) Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research

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Current Perspectives in Second

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

Matsuoka presents an overview of corpus-based research aimed

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

Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions

rise to the concepts of task-induced involvement and deep processing

tions and concordance tables), and as recurring multiword sequences

Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions

suited to their learners through lexical analysis of a range of texts (see

Haastrup, Kirsten / Henriksen, Birgit 2000. Vocabulary acquisition:

Vocabulary Research: Current Themes, New Directions

Lee, Siok H. / Muncie, James 2006. From receptive to productive:

Read, John 1998. Validating a test to measure depth of vocabulary

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge:

2. Quality and quantity of receptive and

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

standing the quality of vocabulary knowledge, one of which is the

In this definition, word use is considered as a component of knowing a

edge can be observed in comprehension and use. The research in

3. Vocabulary as a multidimensional construct

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

in expressing a meaning by speaking or writing. These definitions

4. Implications for research on

in a context which is a comprehensive ability that can be subdivided

Figure 1. Hypothesized relations among three dimensions of vocabulary knowledge.

Building on this hypothesized relations model of multi-dimensional

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

73 target words were selected from a dictionary and showed a similar

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

Figure 2. Operationalized relations between receptive and productive vocabulary

5. Assessing vocabulary knowledge

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

I dont remember having seen this word before.

The significance of VKS is its self-reporting feature which excludes

I do not know this word.

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

I know this word, and it means _________________. (translation) (adapted

Partial knowledge is the intermediate stage between an unknown and a

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

other method, usually used with a multiple choice instrument, is to

I dont remember I have seen or heard of this word before.

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

5.2. Depth dimension

Multidimensional Vocabulary Knowledge

5.2.2. Morphological aspect

He made an ____________ that she likes meat.

Test takers are required to produce the appropriate derivative form of

The example is from Reads (1998) web-based test <www.lextutor.ca/tests/