The Lexical Breadth of Undergraduate Novice Level Writing Competency

Autores/as

  • Scott Roy Douglas University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus

Palabras clave:

Vocabulary, Composition, Undergraduate Studies, English for Academic Purposes, English (Second Language)

Resumen

Abstract

This study builds on previous work exploring reading and listening lexical thresholds (Nation, 2006; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011) in order to investigate productive vocabulary targets that mark successful entry-level undergraduate writing. Papers that passed the Effective Writing Test (EWT) were chosen to create a corpus of novice university level writing (N = 120). Vocabulary profiles were generated, with results indicating the General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) cover an average of 94% of a typical paper.  Further analysis pointed to 3,000 word families and 5,000 word families covering 95% and 98% respectively of each paper.  Low frequency lexical choices from beyond the 8,000 word family boundary accounted for only 0.6% coverage.  These results support the frequency principle of vocabulary learning (Coxhead, 2006), and provide lexical targets for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) curriculum development and materials design.

 

Résumé

Cette étude s'appuie sur des travaux antérieurs qui explorent les niveaux lexicaux pour la lecture et l’écoute (Laufer et Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Nation, 2006; Schmitt, Jiang et Grabe, 2011). Elle a pour but d'étudier les niveaux de production lexicale qui marquent l'écriture à l'entrée à l'université anglophone. Pour créer un corpus d'écriture de niveau universitaire novice, 120 articles qui ont passé le Effective Writing Test (EWT) ont été choisis. Des profils  de vocabulaire ont été générés et les résultats signalent que la General Service List (GSL) et la Academic Word List (AWL) couvrent une moyenne de 94% d'un document typique. En plus, 3 000 familles de mots et 5 000 familles de mots couvrent 95% et 98% respectivement de chaque article. Les choix de basses fréquences lexicales au-delà de la limite de 8 000 mots ne représentaient que 0,6% de la couverture. Ces résultats appuient le principe fréquence de l'apprentissage du vocabulaire (Coxhead, 2006) et fournissent des niveaux lexicaux pour les programmes d’anglais à des fins académiques.

Biografía del autor/a

Scott Roy Douglas, University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus

Assistant Professor, Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL), Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus

Descargas

Publicado

2013-11-07

Cómo citar

Douglas, S. R. (2013). The Lexical Breadth of Undergraduate Novice Level Writing Competency. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16(1), 152–170. Recuperado a partir de https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL/article/view/21176

Número

Vol. 16 Núm. 1 (2013)

Sección

Articles

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