1 Ch 1. VOCABULARY SIZE, TEXT COVERAGE & WORD LISTS Nation& Waring

2 How much vocabulary does an L2 learner need? Three ways to answer: Ask "How many words are there in the target language?" Ask "How many words do native speakers know?" Ask "How many words are needed to do what the learner needs to do?"

3 1. How many words are there in target language? Method: Count or sample the number of words in the largest dictionary. Problems: new words, new uses of old words, old words die Is walk noun the same word as walk verb Are compounds separate words, is Vegemite a words. But this can be dealt with systematically and reliably

4 Two separate studies do counts of Webster's 3 rd International Dictionary Ignore compounds, archaic, abbreviations, propers, alt. spellings or dialect Words are classified into word families  Base word + inflected forms + and transparent derivations Both counts = 54,000 English word families IE, well beyond reach of L2 learners

5 2. How many words do native speakers know? Many studies with very misleading results  Mainly re what items to include and how a word family is defined. But the question is still interesting - an indication of the size of the task facing L2 learners who need to study and work alongside native speakers (NS’s) in L2 medium schools or workplaces.

6 Cont’d Best conservative rule of thumb: L1 = 20,000 word families Add roughly 1000 word families a year up to 20k  5 year = 4000 to 5000 word families.  Grade 12 = 16k to 17k  University grad = 20k L2 learner probably never closes the gap BUT Milton & Meara (1995) using the Eurocentres’ Vocabulary Size Test (Meara & Jones, 88) show advanced learners in L2 environment = 2500 words/year

7 3. How many words are needed to do the things a learner needs to do? Many words, but not all are equally useful.  Frequency = how often the word occurs in normal use of the language.  The = 7% of the words on a page of written English Good News for L2 learners/teachers:  a small number of the words of English occur very frequently  a learner who knows these words, knows a large proportion of the running words in written or spoken text.

8 Table 1: Vocabulary size and text coverage in the Brown corpus (lemmas) 2,000 word families Gives near to 80% coverage of written text, and even greater coverage of informal spoken text Small number of words with strong leverage

9 But how much is 80%? Knowing 2,000 words = knowing 80% of the words in an average text = 20 in 100 = 1 word in 5 is still unknown 80% does not allow reasonable guessing of the meaning of the unknown words 95% coverage is needed for that - Laufer (1989) So 80% is not enough

10 How much more than 80%? Depends on speech vs. text If text, it depends on type of text - E.g., Hirsh and Nation (1992) analysed novels written for teenage readers - Non-adult audience, simpler vocabulary - Continuous novel on one topic by one writer = repetition of vocabulary. - In these favourable conditions, a vocabulary size of 2000 to 3000 words is enough to read and learn from reading

11 Table 2: Vocabulary size and coverage in novels for teenagers The significance of this information: - Although there are 54,000+ families in English - And although educated adult NSs know 20,000 of these - A much smaller number (3, ,000 word families) = comprehension base  Although maybe not = in other languages - Hazenburg and Hulstijn (1996)

12 New Q: How much vocabulary does learner need and how should it be learned? Priority 1 is 3,000 or so high frequency words of any language. Priority 2 is strategies for lower frequency words. E.g., 1. guessing from context, 2. using word parts and mnemonic techniques to remember words, and 3. using vocabulary cards to remember L2 –> L1 pairs. See Nation (1990).

13 How? Direct vs. indirect/incidental learning? Contextualized vs. decontextualized learning Problem is getting to the threshold to start learning from context. How can we give learners large amounts of vocabulary in a short space of time = get to threshold? Nation argues for direct learning through flashcards, for initial acquisition, plus reading to deepen and reinforce, then move to stategies and incidental Cobb (1997,1999, etc) – concordancing, databasing

14 What? We should use frequency lists to target high frequency words in early L2 learning 1. General Service List via direct, then 2. Needs analysis: Is learner going for…  Conversation? => 2k (or 1k) + practice/indirect  General reading? => 2k + strategies + practice  Academic? => 2k + UWL + strategies + practice

15 What is UWL? A second high frequency zone like GSL-2000 list IF the object is to read academic texts Knowing the UWL makes the difference between approximately 80% coverage of a text (1 unknown word in every 5 words) and 90% coverage (1 unknown word in every 10 words). (Another 5% from a third zone: high frequency within a domain – see Sutarsyah et al 1994 ) = 95%

16 The major theme of this paper has been that we need to have clear sensible goals for vocabulary learning. Frequency information provides a rational basis for making sure that learners get the best return for their vocabulary learning effort. Vocabulary frequency lists which take account of range have an important role to play in curriculum design and in setting learning goals.

17 Questions 1. How much vocab does L2 learner need? 2. (Or, what is best way to answer this?) 3. How many applications can you find in this chapter to FL2 teaching and learning?