Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition: The Interface Between Theory and Application

268 Pages·2009·1.36 MB·English

by  Brian Richards

Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition
This page intentionally left blank
Vocabulary Studies in First
and Second Language
Acquisition
The Interface Between Theory and Application
Edited by
Brian Richards
University of Reading
Michael H. Daller
University of the West of England, Bristol
David D. Malvern
University of Reading
Paul Meara
Swansea University
James Milton
Swansea University
and
Jeanine Treffers-Daller
University of the West of England, Bristol
Selection and editorial matter © Brian Richards, Michael H. Daller, David Malvern,
Paul Meara, James Milton, Jeanine Treffers-Daller 2009
Chapters © their individual authors 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 978-0-230-20668-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified
as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-30240-6 ISBN 978-0-230-24225-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230242258
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables ix
Preface by Paul Meara xii
Acknowledgements xv
Notes on the Contributors xvi
1 Lexical Features of Parental Academic Language Input: the
Effect on Vocabulary Growth in Monolingual Dutch Children 1
Lotte Henrichs and Rob Schoonen
2 Vocabulary, Reading and Classroom Supports for Language 23
David K. Dickinson, Tanya R. Flushman and Jill B. Freiberg
3 Exploring Vocabulary with Young L1 Learners: the
Contribution of a Corpus 39
Alison Sealey
4 Vocabulary, Education and Diversity 59
Viv Edwards
5 Language Dominance and Lexical Diversity: How
Bilinguals and L2 Learners Differ in their Knowledge
and Use of French Lexical and Functional Items 74
Jeanine Treffers-Daller
6 Lexical Diversity and Native-Like Selection: the
Bonus of Studying Abroad 91
Pauline Foster
7 Lexical Performance by Native and Non-Native
Speakers on Language-Learning Tasks 107
Peter Skehan
8 Can Differential Processing of L2 Vocabulary Inform
the Debate on Teacher Code-Switching Behaviour? The
Case of Chinese Learners of English 125
Ernesto Macaro, Tao Guo, Huili Chen and Lili Tian
9 Lexical Development in Instructed L2 Learners of
French: Is there a Relationship with Morphosyntactic
Development? 147
Annabelle David, Florence Myles, Vivienne Rogers and Sarah Rule
v
vi Contents
10 A New Method of Measuring Rare Word Diversity: the
Example of L2 Learners of French 164
David Malvern and Brian Richards
11 Vocabulary Knowledge and Academic Success: a Study
of Chinese Students in UK Higher Education 179
Michael H. Daller and Huijuan Xue
12 Vocabulary Size and the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages 194
James Milton and Thomaï Alexiou
References 212
Index 238
List of Figures
1.1 Lexical density of caregiver input during structured
tasks and mealtime conversation 12
1.2 Lexical diversity of caregiver input (D ) during
input
structured tasks and mealtime conversation 12
1.3 Lexical density of child output during structured
tasks and mealtime conversation 14
1.4 Lexical diversity of child output (D ) during
output
structured tasks and mealtime conversation 15
1.5 Receptive vocabulary growth between T1 (3;3)
and T4 (5;10) 16
3.1 Completed worksheet of adverbs modifying quotative
verbs, from the CLLIP corpus; originally colour coded,
but presented here in greyscale 50
3.2 Concordance lines for vast in the CLLIP corpus 55
4.1 Recognizing cognates 67
4.2 Word order in different languages 67
4.3 An example of a translation which is more difficult
than the English 71
5.1 D scores for all three groups 83
6.1 Research design 96
6.2 Patterns of lexical diversity across the three groups 98
8.1 Teacher as dictionary 131
9.1 Simplified underlying sentence structure 152
9.2 Scatterplot of the relationship between MLU
(morphemes) and Guiraud 157
9.3 Scatterplot of the relationship between verbless
utterances and Guiraud 160
9.4 Scatterplot of embedded clauses and Guiraud index 162
10.1 TTR versus token size (N) for language samples of
different diversity 167
10.2 Distribution of RWD in trial texts for 32 students 170
10.3 Simulation data: RWD for different versions of Text 2
with increasing number of rare word types 173
10.4 Simulation data: RWD for different versions of Text 1
with increasing rare word types, showing scale points
and intermediate combinations 175
11.1 Spread of D scores 189
11.2 The spread of C-test scores 190
11.3 C-test scores and number of failed modules 191
vii
viii List of Figures
12.1 A comparison of coverage of text between Carroll
et al.’s (1971) corpus of English and Baudot’s (1992)
French corpus 206
12.2 A comparison of text coverage between Carroll
et al.’s (1971) corpus of English and the Hellenic
National Corpus 207
List of Tables
1.1 Means (standard deviations) of caregivers’ language
features for interaction tasks 9
1.2 Means (standard deviations) of children’s language
features for interaction tasks 10
1.3 Missing values at each measurement point 11
1.4 Children’s scores on receptive vocabulary test,
20 (cid:2) N (cid:2) 25 16
1.5 Correlations across time for children’s receptive
vocabulary test scores 16
1.6 Concurrent correlations (diagonal) between child
receptive vocabulary score and D , and partial
input
correlations (off-diagonal), structured tasks, 20 (cid:2) N (cid:2) 25 17
1.7 Concurrent correlations (diagonal) between child
receptive vocabulary score and D , and partial
input
correlations (off-diagonal), mealtime conversation,
20 (cid:2) N (cid:2) 25 17
2.1 Correlations between preschool language environment
variables and kindergarten and grade four vocabulary
and reading comprehension 27
5.1 Descriptive statistics for tokens, types, D and
Guiraud for each group, and effect sizes for
differences between groups (h2) 81
5.2 Mean scores for noun types, noun tokens and
the index of Guiraud 84
5.3 Mean scores for verb types, verb tokens and the
index of Guiraud 84
5.4 Percentage of relativizers in all three groups 86
5.5 Frequency of each relativizer in each of the three groups 87
6.1 Synopses of the four narratives used in the study 95
6.2 Means (and standard deviations) of D for learners in
London (L), Tehran (T) and native speakers (NS) for all
four narratives and result of the ANOVA conducted
on each narrative 97
6.3 Journey task, frame one: riding the bicycles 99
6.4 Mean lexical phrases per participant (counted as
tokens, not types) 104
7.1 Distribution of ten-word chunks with infrequent words 109
7.2 Example distributions and associated lambdas ((cid:3)) 110
ix