The Effects Of Word Frequency On Chinese Senior High Students' Vocabulary Knowledge Acquisition

Reading has been suggested by both SLA researchers and language teachers to second language learners as an effective way to develop their second language proficiency in general and to expand their vocabulary knowledge.Word frequency is a key factor affecting the vocabulary acquisition of learners in reading.Many studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of frequency on vocabulary acquisition through reading,and specifically to attempt to determine how many encounters are needed for a word to be acquired by second language learners.However,it is still unclear how many word exposures are needed for acquisition to occur.The present study set out to explore the effects of word frequency on Chinese senior high school students' vocabulary-knowledge acquisition in reading.An empirical study was conducted to investigate the effects of word frequency on senior high school students' acquisition of orthography,association,part of speech,syntax,and meaning and form in receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge and the correlations between word frequency and receptive knowledge and productive knowledge.Forty-four senior high school students of grade one participated in the present study.This study investigated participants' five aspects of vocabulary knowledge in ten different measures.The participants were divided into four groups who met ten nonsense target words once,three times,seven times and ten times respectively.After reading,ten vocabulary tests were administered upon the participants.Through the analysis of statistical data,major findings are summarized as follows:1.Word frequency did have effects on learners' receptive and productive knowledge acquisition.Gains in all five aspects tended to increase in receptive and productive knowledge as the number of encounters increased.2.The results of the present study indicated that there was no set number of exposure times would ensure acquisition.Receptive knowledge was gained much better after seven to ten encounters and larger productive knowledge was gained after ten encounters,so learners might need 10 encounters to have a full knowledge of a word.3.The productive knowledge of syntax appeared to be the most difficultly acquired knowledge aspect.Next were knowledge of association and meaning.4.Word frequency correlated with receptive knowledge learning and productive knowledge learning strongly and it correlated more strongly with receptive scores than productive scores.The findings of the present study were in accordance with some previous studies.In the light of above findings,implications,limitations and suggestions for further research were presented.