Learners' English Vocabulary Size in Upper Secondary School. A study of receptive and productive vocabulary size in Vg1 in Norway.
Master thesis
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Date
2019-05-06Metadata
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Abstract
The purpose of the project is to examine the pupils' vocabulary size. 100 students from an upper secondary school in Norway participated voluntarily in the study. In order to measure the receptive vocabulary size, the students have taken an online vocabulary size test, which estimated how many word families they can. To examine the productive vocabulary size, students have submitted written work as part of English teaching. The texts have then been submitted to an online program, Vocabulary Profiler, Classic Edition. In this way, lexical richness, measured by lexical variation, lexical sophistication, lexical density, as well as collocations, lexical errors and use of academic vocabulary could be investigated.
The goal and motivation behind the project was to measure how many words students in an upper secondary school compare it with results for lower levels, and compare with the number of words one should be able to perform various activities in English (e.g. reading a book or viewing one TV series). In addition, investigating the students’ use of academic vocabulary, as described in the Academic Word List, as well as the general vocabulary, cf. General Service List.
The results show that the average receptive vocabulary size of Vg1 students in an upper secondary school in Norway iss 8,338 word families. Average productive vocabulary size is 4,769 word families. The students rely heavily on high-frequency words when writing in English. Mid- and low-frequency words are used to a limited extent. Collocations and academic vocabulary are rarely used.
Description
Master thesis in Literacy studies