THE ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE: VOCABULARY SIZE AND KNOWLEDGE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATION

• Main Authors: Eric Chen-her Hsu, 徐正和
• Other Authors: Wen-ying Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/37w8p5

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 應用語文研究所碩士班 === 92 === The College Entrance Examination Center (CEEC) in Taiwan not only dominates the Scholastic Aptitude English Test (SAET) of the college entrance examination but also compiles a word list as the reference to senior high school English textbooks. In other words, the CEEC word list stands for the threshold of academic vocabulary knowledge in Taiwan. Moreover, vocabulary breadth and depth are two fundamental dimensions when assessing vocabulary knowledge. Particularly, vocabulary size and knowledge of lexical collocation are two of the most important indicators of vocabulary knowledge assessments in terms of vocabulary breadth and depth. Therefore, the present study is conducted to probe into this issue. Specifically, the departure of the study is to assess (1) students’ vocabulary size, by means of a translation test in which student subjects are required to provide a correct Chinese meaning for each item contextually; and (2) the depth of vocabulary knowledge; that is, the knowledge of lexical collocation, by way of a collocation test in which they are required to provide an appropriate collocate for each item. The subjects of the study are 200 seniors from 46 different senior high schools based on the categories of traditional, comprehensive and private schools. The results of the study indicate that for the translation test, the mean vocabulary size of the subjects approximates 3042; for the collocation test, the subjects are able to provide 1865 correct collocates on average. Although students are equipped with fair English vocabulary size, the discrepancy between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge raises much concern about students’ ability to deal with academic reading texts by the time they are admitted to colleges.