A Longitudinal Study Of English Majors’ Free Productive Vocabulary Development

In recent years,productive vocabulary,an important topic in second language vocabulary acquisition,has attracted widespread attention of scholars at home and abroad.However,most previous studies on productive vocabulary are cross-sectional,and their focus is mostly on the dimension of lexical richness.Limited studies probe into the interaction between vocabulary size and lexical richness.Therefore,this study seeks to investigate Chinese English majors’ free productive vocabulary development in terms of the dimensions of vocabulary size and lexical richness and their interrelationship.Based on the Dynamic Systems Theory,the Input and Output Hypotheses,this study addresses the following two questions:1)What are the characteristics of English majors’ free productive vocabulary development?2)What is the relationship among different dimensions of English majors’ free productive vocabulary?30 English majors from a university in Changsha were recruited as subjects in this study.The total of their free writings,collected throughout a 4-year period,is 210,and they were processed by means of V-size and Vocaprofile.The data were then analyzed by SPSS.The major findings of this study are as follows:1)The general development of English majors’ free productive vocabulary witnesses a gradual increase,and a significant growth was manifested during the four years.The development of different dimensions was not synchronous.And a lexical plateau of free productive vocabulary mainly occurred in the seventh semester.Different from the general upward trend,some dimensions of the free productive vocabulary remained stagnant or even declined,or no Lexical Plateau appeared for some subjects.2)In general,there was a highly positive interrelationship among different dimensions of English majors’ free productive vocabulary.However,there was no significant correlation or a competitive relationship among different dimensions of some English majors’ free productive vocabulary.The main findings indicate that the free productive vocabulary increases gradually with peaks and valleys,and the development is dynamic and nonlinear.The general development of free productive vocabulary is also a process with multi-dimensional interaction,with each dimension supporting each other and forming connected growers.The development trajectories of some research subjects are inconsistent with the general development trajectory.This study reveals that the general trend of Chinese English majors’ free productive vocabulary development,which provides guidance forEnglish majors’ vocabulary and writing teaching.Due to the limitations of time and other resources,the development characteristics and interrelationship among different dimensions of English majors’ free productive vocabulary are partially manifested.