James Milton

Vocabulary Uptake from Informal Learning Tasks.

It is common to encourage foreign-language learners to use their language outside the classroom and to read books and papers, listen to songs and watch films in the foreign language. One of the benefits which are thought to accrue from these activities is that learners can build good vocabularies. It has even been argued that casual exposure to the foreign language of this kind is the only way to build a good vocabulary. This paper reviews the published evidence concerning vocabulary acquisition inside and outside the classroom, and reports a series of small and case studies of learners using films, comic books and songs which test in some detail the volumes of lexis gained. It appears that these techniques can lead to very sizeable vocabulary gains but there are some caveats. One is that learners must want to carry out these informal tasks and learn the language. A second is that success appears to be associated with a focus on form, and it is not clear that genuinely incidental exposure to the foreign language results in worthwhile language gains.

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.

Vocabulary size revisited: the link between vocabulary size and academic achievement

Abstract Many researchers have tried to assess the number of words adults know. A general conclusion which emerges from such studies is that vocabularies of English monolingual adults are very large with considerable variation. This variation is important given that the vocabulary size of schoolchildren in the early years of school is thought to materially affect subsequent educational attainment. The data is difficult to interpret, however, because of the different methodologies which researchers use. The study in this paper uses the frequency-based vocabulary size test from Goulden et al (1990) and investigates the vocabulary knowledge of undergraduates in three British universities. The results suggest that monolingual speaker vocabulary sizes may be much smaller than is generally thought with far less variation than is usually reported. An average figure of about 10,000 English word families emerges for entrants to university. This figure suggests that many students must struggle with the comprehension of university level texts.

How many words do you need to speak Arabic? An Arabic vocabulary size test

ABSTRACT This study describes a vocabulary size test in Arabic used with 339 native speaking learners at school and university in Saudi Arabia. Native speaker vocabulary size scores should provide targets for attainment for learners of Arabic, should inform the writers of course books and teaching materials, and the test itself should allow learners to monitor their progress towards the goal of fluency. Educated native speakers of Arabic possess a recognition vocabulary about 25,000 words, a total which is large compared with equivalent test scores of native speakers of English. The results also suggest that acquisition increases in speed with age and this is tentatively explained by the highly regular system of morphological derivation which Arabic uses and which, it is thought, is acquired in adolescence. This again appears different from English where the rate of acquisition appears to decline with age. While the test appears reliable and valid, there are issues surrounding the definition of a word in Arabic and further research into how words are stored, retrieved and processed in Arabic is needed to inform the construction of further tests which might, it is thought, profitably use a more encompassing definition of the lemma as the basis for testing.