Measuring the Vocabulary Size of Native Speakers of English in New Zealand Secondary Schools

“While some of this research is methodologically faulty (see Nation and Webb 2011: 197–200 for a critique of Hart and Risley 1995), there is plenty of evidence of large individual differences in vocabulary knowledge (Farkas and Beron 2004; Biemiller 2005).”

“To read novels and newspapers with 98 % coverage of the words in the text, learners would need to have a receptive vocabulary size of around 8,000–9,000 word families (Nation 2006).”

“Typically, the research shows that the more words that a learner knows, the greater the likelihood of comprehension of the text (Schmitt et al. 2011), with a 98 % coverage of the vocabulary of the text being the minimum optimal level for most learners to gain adequate comprehension.”

“There were no gender differences in vocabulary size, just as Biemiller and Slonim (2001) also found no differences with younger learners.”

“…five groups–high-frequency words (the most frequent 3,000 word families of English), mid-frequency words (the 4th to 9th 1,000 words of English) (Schmitt and Schmitt 2012), low-frequency words (the remaining English word families up to the 25th 1,000), words not in the twenty-five 1,000 word…”

“However, with native speaker estimates being up to 17,000 word families (Goulden et al. 1990), a larger test was needed.”

“Vocabulary size increases with age (Biemiller and Slonim 2001; Farkas and Beron 2004).”

“Beglar (2010) evaluated this 140-item monolingual VST in Japan with a mixture of native speakers and nonnative speakers.”

“Unfortunately, sampling from dictionaries is almost inevitably methodologically unsound (Thorndike 1924; Lorge and Chall 1963; Nation 1993) leading to highly over-inflated estimates of vocabulary size (Seashore and Eckerson 1940; Smith 1941; Diller 1978).”

“The VST sampling from 14,000 word families may be adequate for testing the vocabulary size of most non-native speakers of English, especially learners of English as a foreign language whose first language is not cognate with English, as Elgort (2013) and Nguyen and Nation (2011) have found.”

“Using a similar method, D’Anna et al. (1991) also found that university students’ vocabulary size was likely to be less than 20,000 basic words.”

“The VST sampling from 14,000 word families may be adequate for testing the vocabulary size of most non-native speakers of English, especially learners of English as a foreign language whose first language is not cognate with English, as Elgort (2013) and Nguyen and Nation (2011) have found.”

“In a re-calculation of Smith’s (1941) results using Seashore and Eckerson’s tests, adjusting for sampling errors and types of words counted, Lorge and Chall (1963) estimated that instead of first-graders knowing 16,900 basic words as Smith found, they were more likely to know 6,500 basic words.”

“Scarcella and Zimmerman (1998) looked at male and female English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ scores on a test of academic lexicon, finding that males gained higher scores even when a wide range of other variables such as length of residence and age of arrival in the United States were…”

“Unfortunately, sampling from dictionaries is almost inevitably methodologically unsound (Thorndike 1924; Lorge and Chall 1963; Nation 1993) leading to highly over-inflated estimates of vocabulary size (Seashore and Eckerson 1940; Smith 1941; Diller 1978).”

“Previous research (Henning 1991) indicated the value of such a context.”

“While some of this research is methodologically faulty (see Nation and Webb 2011: 197–200 for a critique of Hart and Risley 1995), there is plenty of evidence of large individual differences in vocabulary knowledge (Farkas and Beron 2004; Biemiller 2005).”

“Using measures of lexical richness, Prados (2010) found no difference between male and female writers in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), just as Biemiller and Slonim (2001) found no difference in their data for males and females (p. 502).”

“Similarly, Coxhead et al. (2015) explored factors contributing to the vocabulary size of native speakers of English in New Zealand secondary schools.”

“For example, Coxhead et al. (2015) designed tests for native English speakers in New Zealand secondary schools, while Karami et al. (2020) created tests for Iranian English learners, and Zhao and Ji (2018) developed a Mandarin version.”

“Thereby, it can be concluded that there was no significant difference of vocabulary size in gender differences, as it stated by Coxhead, Nation, and Sim (2015) in their research that there were no gender differences in vocabulary size.”

“According to Coxhead et al. (2015), the term vocabulary size is known as an approximated number of words that an individual knows at least their meaning.”