Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The place of vocabulary in language assessment
- 2 The nature of vocabulary
- 3 Research on vocabulary acquisition and use
- 4 Research on vocabulary assessment
- 5 Vocabulary tests: four case studies
- 6 The design of discrete vocabulary tests
- 7 Comprehensive measures of vocabulary
- 8 Further developments in vocabulary assessment
- References
- Index
7 - Comprehensive measures of vocabulary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The place of vocabulary in language assessment
- 2 The nature of vocabulary
- 3 Research on vocabulary acquisition and use
- 4 Research on vocabulary assessment
- 5 Vocabulary tests: four case studies
- 6 The design of discrete vocabulary tests
- 7 Comprehensive measures of vocabulary
- 8 Further developments in vocabulary assessment
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter we move to a broader concept of vocabulary assessment than the kinds of tests that were covered in Chapter 6. Instead of a selective focus on particular words, the measures to be discussed here look more comprehensively at the vocabulary content of a spoken or written text. In a language test, we are most frequently interested in what learners produce in response to writing or speaking tasks; however, we can also use similar procedures to evaluate the suitability of a text to function as the input for a reading or listening task.
Comprehensive measures are particularly suitable for assessment procedures in which vocabulary is embedded as one component of the measurement of a larger construct, such as communicative competence in speaking, academic writing ability or listening comprehension. However, we cannot simply say that all comprehensive measures are embedded ones, because they can also be used on a discrete basis. For example, a number of the studies which have applied lexical statistics to learner compositions have been conducted by L2 vocabulary researchers who were not interested in an overall assessment of writing ability but just in making inferences about the learners' productive vocabulary knowledge. These researchers are clearly treating vocabulary as a separate construct and not making any more general assessment of the quality of the learners' writing.
In this chapter, we look first at measures related to test input and then at those applied to test-taker responses.
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- Information
- Assessing Vocabulary , pp. 188 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000