David Malvern

Investigating accommodation in language proficiency interviews using a new measure of lexical diversity

Lexical diversity is an important indicator of language learners’ active vocabulary and how it is deployed. Traditionally it has been measured by the Type-Token Ratio (TTR), the ratio of different words to total words used. Unfortunately, TTR is a function of sample size: larger samples of words will give a lower TTR and even commonly used measures derived from TTR which are claimed to be independent of sample size are problematic. To overcome this, the authors have developed an innovative measure of vocabulary diversity, D, based on mathematically modelling how new words are introduced into larger and larger language samples, and have produced software (vocd) to calculate it. Previous research by the authors into language proficiency interviews (Richards and Malvern, 2000) investigated linguistic and discourse accommodation of teacher-testers using a wide range of student and teacher variables. In a study of teenage learners of French, the aspect of teachers’ language in oral interviews that was most responsive to the ability of their students was lexical diversity. The analysis reported here focuses on this finding in greater depth using the new measure, D. The relationship between D and other measures of foreign language proficiency is investigated, the Ds of students and teachers are compared and the correlations between teachers’ D and students’ proficiency are computed. Results firstly demonstrate the validity of D as a measure of vocabulary diversity and the effectiveness of vocd as a tool to analyse language data. Secondly, with regard to accommodation processes in oral testing, the two teachers did not finely tune their vocabulary diversity to the proficiency of individual students. Instead, each teacher roughly adjusted his or her language to the ability of the class they examined.

Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition

This book presents recent original research on vocabulary that explores common themes and current issues in both first and second language over a wide range of ages and stages. A key feature is that, in every case, the issues have implications for educational practice and policy.

Mathematical Models in Science

In ending his charming and insightful essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, by observing that The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve the Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner (1960) summarises the difficulty in understanding why mathematical models seem to be essential and not merely useful to science. Although there may be a straightforward distinction between mathematics and science, the truths of mathematics are based on deriving consequences from axioms while those of science rest on empirical evidence, so intertwined are they that it may not be so easy to determine whether a given page of text belongs to one or the other, nor to say who is a mathematician and who a scientist. Thales (624-546 BCE) was generally considered the founder of both Greek science and mathematics and perhaps the most popularly known mathematician. Pythagoras and Euclid also worked, apparently seamlessly, in the sciences. Euclid systematised geometry axiomatically but also treated optics as part of geometry. Pythagoras’ analysis of sound, which remains unaltered today, was at one with his theories of numbers and of astronomy.

Introduction: Special issue on knowledge and use of the lexicon in French as a second language

This special issue of JFLS focuses on what learners know about French words, on how they use that knowledge and on how it can be investigated and assessed. In many ways, it is a sequel to the special issue on the Acquisition of French as a Second Language edited by Myles and Towell that appeared in JFLS in 2004. While articles on the L2 acquisition of the French lexicon have appeared in a variety of journals, including JFLS, this special issue (SI) is the first volume which specifically focuses on lexical knowledge and use among learners of French as a second language. The issue is timely, because of the growing importance of vocabulary in the SLA research agenda, but also because research into vocabulary acquisition appears at the top of a list of areas in which teachers of Modern Foreign Languages are most interested.

Measuring Value Consensus Among Teachers in Respect of Special Educational Needs

Previous educational research has argued that consensus upon values and goals among teachers within a school is a necessary condition for the successful development of provision for pupils with special educational needs. This paper describes a study designed to investigate this assertion empirically. Questionnaires were administered to a crosssection of teachers in five English secondary schools which belonged to a consortium dedicated to the development of special educational needs provision. On each of four different dimensions, teachers were asked to rank five alternatives in order of importance. The strength of consensus in the sample as a whole, and within each school, was measured using Kendalls coefficient of concordance (W). A novel clustering technique was then applied, which succeeded in identifying groups of teachers who shared a stronger consensus than obtained in the whole sample or within each school. The findings suggest that other factors, such as the teachers position in the school, amount of teaching experience, gender and type of subject taught, may be more important in the production of consensus than which school a teacher belongs to.

A New Method of Measuring Rare Word Diversity: the Example of L2 Learners of French

In his summary of measures of effective vocabulary use, Read (2000) includes among his four dimensions of lexical richness ‘A selection of low frequency words … rather than just general, everyday vocabulary [including] technical terms and jargon as well as the kind of uncommon words that allow writers to express their meanings in a precise and sophisticated manner’ (p. 200). He refers to this characteristic as lexical sophistication.

Swedish verb morphology in language impaired children: Interpreting the Type-Token Ratios

An earlier article by Hansson (3) studied Swedish verbs in the speech of five grammatically impaired children. Verb Type-Token Ratios (TTRs) were calculated to compare childrens lexical diversity for main verbs, and to investigate the relative diversity of state verbs and change verbs. Results showed that for all children except one, change verbs were more varied than state verbs. However, the validity of the TTRs is called into question because the most advanced child in the study had the lowest verb TTR. It is argued here that this anomaly, together with one child being an exception to the finding of greater diversity in change verbs, is an artefact of calculating TTRs from unequal sample sizes.

Vocabulary (guest editorial)

Following the call for papers for a special issue of the Language Learning Journal on vocabulary, it was very pleasing to receive a large number of submissions, not just from Britain, but from across Europe, the Middle East and from as far away as Australia. In the research community, vocabulary is a vital and active area of language learning research. In reading these articles, I am struck by how many writers felt it was necessary to stress just how important vocabulary is to language teaching and learning. The importance of vocabulary seems to have been lost to many teachers, educational administrators and syllabus writers, although it might be thought that words ought to be the building blocks of language and prominent in any class or teaching syllabus. It is a feature of the study of vocabulary in particular that the findings of research, no matter how important they are, have failed to make an impact on the practice of foreign-language teaching and testing. In recent years I can think of only Coxhead’s Academic Word List which has been embraced by learners and teachers, and this only in the field of English as a foreign language (EFL). Elsewhere, the prominence, even the relevance, of vocabulary appears to be diminishing. The latest incarnation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (The Council of Europe 2003), for example, uses only a framework of skills and has omitted its earlier work on vocabulary lists. As Häcker’s article in this issue points out, the British National Curriculum manages to work through to level 8 of its attainment level descriptors before vocabulary is specifically mentioned. Even textbooks on teaching techniques, for example CILT’s Classic Pathfinder fourth volume on vocabulary building (Harris and Snow 2004), can conclude that time spent teaching and learning vocabulary is ‘time . . . wasted’ and that vocabulary teaching should be minimally restricted to those words explicitly needed for, presumably, examination topics (58). So, why is vocabulary important, and what can research in vocabulary bring to teachers and learners to help them? What is the relevance of the papers in this Special Issue? I think there are several very direct ways in which vocabulary research can help make teaching and learning, easier, more efficient and even more pleasant. The first thing vocabulary research can provide is an understanding of how language is constructed, how it is learned, and how it is used in communication. This issue contains two papers that suggest that vocabulary is integral to language learning and communication. Stæhr’s paper investigates the role of vocabulary in the communicative skills of reading, writing and listening. It appears that vocabulary knowledge correlates very highly with performance in these areas. The more words a learner knows then the better he or she will tend to be at reading, writing and speaking in their foreign language. It should not be a surprise to learn that learners with very small vocabulary resources struggle to communicate at any level. There is a case for arguing that vocabulary is the single most important factor in determining how successful a learner is in communicating. Hilton’s article in this Special Issue investigates the role of vocabulary knowledge in speaking in a foreign language. By examining the pauses that occur in speech, the Language Learning Journal Vol. 36, No. 2, December 2008, 135–138

Synchronizing Mathematics and Physics in the Sixth Form.

The author discusses the relationship between physics and mathematics teaching at the sixth-form level. Some difficulties associated with the sequencing of topics are discussed, and a technique for developing a strategy for reducing the mismatch between the two subjects is outlined.

Lexical Diversity and Lexical Sophistication in First Language Writing

The research reported in this chapter has several aims. First, we wished to extend the exploration of vocabulary richness, particularly lexical diversity to the medium of writing. It was important to assess the extent to which vocabulary diversity as measured by D, and word rarity continued to be valid developmental measures in older children producing samples of writing. That is to say, do these measures continue to improve in line with increasing age and developing proficiency in the written modality? In respect of D, Ruth Berman’s project ‘Developing literacy in different contexts and in different languages’ (Berman, 2000) that we referred to in Chapter 1, has already applied D to both the speech and writing of children in three age groups (9–10, 12–13, 16–17) and adults across two genres in seven languages. Results show main effects for age, language, and genre but not for modality, that is to say, speech versus writing (Berman and Verhoeven, 2002). In an analysis that focused exclusively on the results for Swedish, on the other hand, differences were found between modalities at all four ages, and an overall effect of age on writing (Stromqvist et al., 2002). However, differences between individual age groups at the older and younger ages were not significant. This study gives further support to D as a developmental measure, but it is not possible to scrutinise the results for writing within a single language. In addition, there is no single independent measure of the quality of the writing produced that can be used for validation purposes, and this is one of the strengths of the research to be described in this chapter.