2025-10-10
Since its conception in the 1950s, the Lexical Availability Task (LAT) has steadily gained prominence as an assessment tool in language teaching and learning, perhaps due to the fact that it not only provides a useful indication of the lexical resources which are available to learners, but it also obtains this rich set of data in a rather economical way (Jiménez Catalán & Fitzpatrick, 2014). The LAT requires participants to write as many words as come to mind in response to a specific stimulus or cue-word within a time limit of 2 minutes. The responses obtained provide a lexical corpus of available words for that cue-word or centre of interest. While previous research has highlighted the value of using lexical availability (LA) as a tool for selecting target foreign language vocabulary (Ávila Muñoz, 2017), this article argues that this tool should not be used in isolation, but rather should be implemented appropriately alongside a number of other factors in order to best determine target vocabulary. A theoretical exploration of the LAT as a tool for the selection of vocabulary to be taught in class is thus provided, taking into consideration a number of key factors: the most readily available words in each field of natives of the age group, other similar groups, words from the school context, equivalent words of highly available words from L1 and the teaching context. Suggestions are made for incorporating LA as a tool for vocabulary selection in classrooms.
The present study seeks to fulfill the following three objectives: (1) to examine the controlled productive vocabulary of unimodal EFL learners, (2) to identify their perceptual learning style preferences, and (3) to determine whether the major preference for a specific perceptual learning style ensures a higher controlled productive vocabulary. The sample of the present study comprised 36 unimodal EFL learners who were enrolled in the 12th grade in the Spanish educational system. Two data collection instruments were administered. The 2,000-word parallel version (version A + version C) of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1995, 1999) was used to obtain the controlled productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants. The Learning Style Survey (Cohen et al., 2009) was used to assess their perceptual learning style preferences (visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic). Findings revealed that the informants had an overall controlled productive vocabulary knowledge of 948 words, out of the 2,000 most frequent words that the test measured. Visual appeared to be the most favored perceptual learning style, followed by tactile/kinesthetic and auditory styles. Similarly, visual learners were reported to have a larger productive vocabulary knowledge, followed by tactile/kinesthetic and auditory learners. Nevertheless, the results indicated that there were not statistically significant differences among controlled productive vocabulary knowledge and each perceptual learning style preference. These findings are suggestive of the need for further instruction on EFL vocabulary in the Spanish educational system so that learners would be able to communicate effectively both orally and in written form in English.
In the present study, a selection of two adapted versions addressed to basic and intermediate levels (A1-B1) of the classic novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens will be compared in terms of their cultural vocabulary. Our analysis attempts to determine to what extent cultural words are part of the two adapted texts for basic and intermediate level EFL learners, and to establish how the frequency and complexity of cultural words is addressed in each book. To accomplish these goals, the books were processed with the vocabulary analyser software LancsBox and cultural loaded words were examined employing Cultural Linguistic framework of analysis. The main findings indicate that: (i) cultural vocabulary at basic and intermediate levels of proficiency does not increase in proportion, (ii) cultural word occurrences in graded readers are not enough to facilitate their acquisition whereas the most frequent cultural words tend to be oversimplified. However, cultural conceptualizations address different and more complex cultural concepts progressively what may contribute to the development of EFL learners’ cultural understanding through their receptive vocabulary.
This study has two objectives. The first is to ascertain whether there exists a relationship between the level of productive vocabulary and lexical availability in English as a foreign language. The second is to explore the depth of productive lexical knowledge through qualitative analysis of the level of words generated by upper secondary EFL learners. The measurement instruments were a Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (PVLT) and a lexical availability task, with eight semantic categories that served as prompts to activate word production. In the present study we analysed two traditional (SCHOOL, ANIMALS) and two non-traditional (TRAIN, FREE) semantic categories. We aimed to determine whether lexical availability and productive vocabulary are two closely related dimensions. The results show a significant positive correlation between the production of words generated in the lexical availability task and the scores obtained in PVLT. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis of the data indicates that the words generated by two groups of EFL learners correspond predominantly to the level of the 1,000 and 2,000 most frequent words in English.
The development of corpus methods has led to a deepened understanding of the patterning of vocabulary, with positive impacts on learner dictionaries, vocabulary profiling and text analysis, as well as hands-on language learning with concordancers. While learning activities based on corpus data have been used in English language teaching for many years, these have tended to be generated by textbook writers and teachers manually selecting and organising corpus data. This paper evaluates a new corpus-based game which was developed based on the data-driven learning exercise “One Item, Multiple Contexts” (Johns, 1997) or “spot the missing word” (Hanks, 2013). This kind of exercise was gamified in a learner-friendly corpus tool – The Prime Machine. To evaluate the language learning potential of the automatically provided materials, a corpus-based analytical approach was employed, categorizing the patterning of the target items and distractors. The primings of lexico-grammatical features involving collocation, semantic association, and colligation were categorized and compared. The corpus-based analyses found reoccurring patterns and primings in the concordance lines across the learning phase and the gaming phase. Interviews with 5 Chinese university EFL students who had played the game were conducted. The interview questions focused on asking participants’ noticing behaviours, the compatibility of difficulty levels, and their perceptions towards the game. The responses showed that respondents noticed reoccurring language patterns and measured the difficulty level specific to their gaming experiences. A request was made for more explanation on missed patterns when the incorrect item was selected, and improvements on the reward system were suggested. All participants perceived the game to be beneficial for learning lexico-grammatical features of English vocabulary.
The increasing popularity of listening to podcasts for the purpose of improving English among Armenian teenagers raises the question as to what impact this might have on incidental vocabulary learning. A positive impact would be very welcome, especially in Armenia, where podcasts might prove to be one of the few affordable technology applications. This prospect gave rise to a mixedmethod, quasi-experimental study designed to answer the following research questions: (1) What is the relationship between incidental vocabulary learning and extensive listening to podcasts? (2) What is the relationship between the frequency of occurrence of the target vocabulary in podcast episodes and incidental vocabulary learning? (3) What is the relationship between the distribution of occurrence of the target vocabulary across the podcast episodes and incidental vocabulary learning? The instruments applied for data acquisition were Updated Vocabulary Levels pre- and postTests, project-designed pre- and post- tests, weekly listening comprehension tests, digital listening journal analyses and a post-survey. The results indicate that extensive listening to podcasts leads to significant vocabulary growth.
This paper presents a practice-based action research study in which, based on a thorough analysis of the students’ vocabulary knowledge and learning objectives, a rich context is created for the acquisition of English vocabulary learning. Based on the initial vocabulary breadth and depth tests, the learners were divided into two groups. While both groups were given opportunities for extensive reading, written and spoken output, some language focused study and in-built strategy training, the less advanced group had more opportunities for extensive listening. The latter group also initially displayed a narrower range of vocabulary learning strategies. In addition, a small group of independent learners which engaged mainly in extensive reading and controlled output served as a comparison with the two treatment groups. While the learners in both treatment groups experienced vocabulary growth, which was not the case with independent learners, the less advanced learners achieved higher scores on the target vocabulary.
Development of L2 learner's collocational competence is among the most complex aspects of language acquisition. It is strongly influenced by external factors such as instruction, L2 language proficiency, L1 influence, as well as the psychological-affective ones such as motivation and language learning strategies. Collocation learning strategies (CLS), a subcategory of vocabulary learning strategies, can be defined as mental and physical actions learners consciously use to assist them in the specific task of learning collocations. The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between collocational competence and CLS in an English for specific purposes (ESP) context. ESP collocations are multi-word expressions containing at least one specialised term which is usually the node of collocation. CLS frequency use was measured by the CLS Questionnaire (Tabak, 2022). The collocation knowledge test included the following three parts: 1) receptive knowledge test, i.e., a combination of a fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice task, modelled after the COLLMATCH format (Gyllstad, 2007), 2) test of receptive-productive knowledge of whole collocations adapted from the CONTRIX format (Revier, 2009), and 3) productive knowledge test, i.e., an L1-L2 translation task. Multiple regression analysis revealed that CLS are not a significant predictor of receptive collocation knowledge. CLS referring to learning collocations in context emerged as a positive predictor, and organisational CLS as a negative predictor of receptive-productive and productive collocation knowledge. Also, CLS referring to discovery of collocation meaning by guessing negatively correlated with the translation test scores. The results point to the importance of teaching and learning collocations in context.
In this interview, Paul Nation answers a number of pertinent questions at length. The questions address the origin of his interest in vocabulary, in addition to his views on ways in which vocabulary is learned, taught, assessed and researched. In a number of answers, Nation returns to his four strands framework, in which he seeks to imbed vocabulary teaching and learning. Finally, he gives some direction for future vocabulary research.
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