Vocabulary Knowledge Acquisition And Assessment: Different Aspects And Their Relationships

The study investigates three aspects of vocabulary knowledge of intermediate level English majors, i.e. passive vocabulary size, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and active vocabulary knowledge as expressed in free composition. It also examines the gains in the three aspects after one year of university study and the relationships among the three aspects in the same individual.The writer first makes several distinctions: tokens vs. types, lemmas vs. word families, single words vs. multi-word units. All the tests done in this study adopt word family as the basic counting unit. The key concept underlying the term of word family is 'learning burden', which refers to the amount of effort required to learn a word. Other relevant concepts and issues are defined and accounted here , such as the vocabulary size of English language, that of the native speakers, the threshold vocabulary for a L2 learner, frequency counts and frequency lists.In the second chapter, the nature of vocabulary knowledge is discussed from the perspective of components. The form, meaning and use of a word are examined separately, and the receptive and productive distinction is applied to all three layers. The writer surveys some interesting discoveries in the researches on vocabulary knowledge, for example, the bathtub effect in the memorization of a word. The importance of orthographical knowledge is reconsidered. The most complex part of vocabulary knowledge, the meaning of a word, is investigated from eight different aspects, such as the prototype theory, semantics and sense relations , word association, etc.Chapter three is a survey of different vocabulary knowledge assessment theories and practical instruments. Researches into vocabulary knowledge measurement develop along three main lines, i.e. the passive vocabulary size, the depth of vocabulary knowledge and free active vocabulary. Both the traditional ways of testing vocabulary knowledge, and newly-developed unconventional instruments are presented. Their strong points and weaknesses are discussed in regard to theory and practice.Based on the above theories, the study itself is shown in chapter four. The writer chooses three instruments for conducting the investigation, the Vocabulary Levels Test to measure the passive vocabulary size, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale to assess how much the learners know about a word, i.e. the depth or quality of vocabulary knowledge, and the Range to measure free production from a lexical perspective. The subjects are students from two natural classes of the English Department. These two groups are very closely matched on all other variables except the one year of university study, so the study is viewed as longitudinal. The result shows that the learners' vocabulary knowledge in all three aspects grows significantly in one year of university study. As for the relationships among the three aspects , passive vocabulary size and the depth of vocabulary knowledge are strongly related, but only the depth of vocabulary knowledge is related with free productive knowledge. This result is discussed in terms of the nature of vocabulary knowledge acquisition and the effect of different ways of learning on the outcome.Chapter five is a continuation of the discussion in chapter four, presenting different theories about vocabulary acquisition. A general framework is provided first, the five stages of which, apperceived input, comprehended input, intake, integration and output, are explained in terms of vocabulary acquisition. Then the nature and issues of incidental learning are explored from six different aspects, i.e. the way incidental learning occurs, sight vocabulary essential for incidental learning, the number and kind of exposures necessary for successful acquisition, the type of word-guessing strategies and knowledge sources needed, the problem of whether to teach the word-guessing strategies, and its limitations. Incidental learning of vocabulary, for a long period of time, is considered the most effective way of increasing one's vocabulary size, but recent researc...