A Longitudinal Study On The Variation Of Lexical Richness In English Majors’writings

A great amount of research has shown that vocabulary plays an indispensable role in language teaching and learning. Lexical richness (LR), as an important part of vocabulary, is also a good indicator of language proficiency. Thus, recent years have witnessed an increasing quantity of multi-dimensional research about LR in written performances. However, a brief review of previous empirical studies reveal that most of them are synchronic researches, measuring either different L2learners’LR or the correlation between LR and writing quality, and longitudinal studies are rare.Using the theoretical framework put forward by Laufer&Nation (1995), Engber (1995) and Read (2000), the present study aims to investigate the developmental trend of LR for English majors.The subjects for this current study are104college English majors who are selected randomly from a normal university in China and a longitudinal study is conducted from three dimensions:lexical variation (LV), lexical density (LD) and lexical sophistication (LS). The study lasted for1.5years and collected416argumentative essays of their final examinations from term four to term seven. It could be divided into three sections:Firstly, we investigated the changes and developmental trend of L2learners during1.5years of study by the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and various tools such as RANGE and SPSS were used. Secondly,70native essays by college students were chosen from LOCNESS corpus as a reference to see whether such changes could bring L2learners closer to native speakers. Finally, L2learners’data were given a holistic rating to investigate the relationship between LR and writing quality.The results are summarized as follows:1) After1.5years of study, significant progress has been made by Chinese English majors in all the three dimensions despite the fact that for each dimension, the highest level of proficiency does not appear in term seven, which is partly due to syllabus design and plateau learning period.2) Despite the significant progress of LV and LS, there still exists a great discrepancy between L2learners and native speakers. However, the situation changes when it comes to LD, where L2learners could surpass native speakers in the fifth and seventh terms. 3) Whereas significant positive correlations are found among LV, LD, LS and writing quality, LS bears a stronger influence than LV and LD.The study concludes that L2learners have made significant progress in LR after the golden learning period, despite the fact that a great distance still exists between native speakers and them in LV and LS. And LR is closely related with writing quality. Having conducted an in-depth analysis of the background reasons, we provide college English teachers and students with useful suggestions for their future vocabulary teaching and learning.