A Corpus-based Study On Lexical Richness Of English Majors

Lexical richness as a key term has been considered as an essential indicator of the quality of writing and prominent predictor of learner’s general language proficiency(Laufer&Nation,1995).In recent years,domestic and foreign researchers launched studies from many aspects on the lexical richness,most from the point view of the relationship between the lexical richness of written language and writing ability.However,researchers comparing different grades of English majors from the aspects of spoken English and written English are rare.Data for this study comes from Chinese students’ spoken and written English coipus(SWECCL)and British National Corpus(BNC)is used as a reference.According to the theoretical framework proposed by Read(2000),the research questions are from the following three dimensions:lexical diversity,lexical density and lexical sophistication.Based on the measuring method proposed by previous scholars and quantitative and qualitative analysis method,the features of lexical use by different grades of Chinese English Majors in spoken English and written English are discussed respectively.The results further confirm that the lexical richness of Chinese English majors is weaker than that of native speakers and the lexical richness of spoken English is weaker than that of written English.However,there exist differences in some specific aspects.As far as lexical variation and lexical density are concerned,low grade students tend to have a greater disparity between spoken English and written English,and spoken English has a greater disparity between high grade students and low grade students.At the same time,the high grade students’ spoken English is lower than those of low grade students’ written English.As far as lexical sophistication is concerned,high grade students tend to have a greater disparity between spoken English and written English,and spoken English has a greater disparity between high grade students and low grade students.Moreover,the lexical sophistication of high grade students’ spoken English is much higher than that of low grade students’ written English.