This paper represents a summary and discussion of the three studies presented at the morning session of the Fall 2022 JALT Vocabulary SIG. The papers, which were written by Ali Al-Hoorie, Masaki Eguchi, Derek Canning, Stuart McLean, Christopher Nicklin, and Joseph Vitta, represent a range of topics and study designs that are common in recent…

Local item dependency (LID) occurs when test-takers' responses to one test item are affected by their responses to another. It can be problematic if it causes inflated reliability estimates or distorted person and item measures. The cued-recall reading comprehension test in Hu and Nation's (2000) well-known and influential coverage--comprehension…

A growing body of vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) studies focuses on accumulating empirical evidence on the relationship between frequency of VLS use and vocabulary acquisition by using the frequency-based measures of VLSs. Our study by contrast, examined which VLSs are perceived as important and useful, and how they are employed by Japanese…

Studies relating to the vocabulary items within EFL textbooks have revealed a divergence from well-researched wordlists such as the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne et al., 2013), and the BNC/COCA wordlist (Nakayama, 2022; Sun and Dang, 2020). In Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) recently…

A standard treatment of proper names in second language (L2) vocabulary analyses is to categorize them as known items. This treatment is often supported by the assumption that the form of the proper name (i.e., the initial capital letter) and the context will indicate to the L2 reader that the item is a proper name. The aim of this work-in-…

The present study investigates the use of generative strategies and their effect on second language (L2) vocabulary retention and learner confidence in vocabulary knowledge over time. Generative strategies (or generation) are one in a group of learning methods known as desirable difficulties -- strategies that improve long-term learning by adding…

In this study, an instrument for measuring proper name (PN) familiarity was developed for a psycholinguistic experiment investigating the effect of PNs on Japanese university students' English reading fluency. Familiarity has previously been operationalized in disparate ways, producing contradictory results. Furthermore, authors of previous…

This experiment tested gains in spoken fluency and ability to complete a dictation listening task accurately among 33 Japanese L1 English language users. Both a control group (N = 17) and an experimental group (N = 16) studied Anki vocabulary cards each week for 10 weeks and described three picture stories that contained the vocabulary words every…

The substantive component of construct validity requires a confrontation between empirical test results and content relevance. The Vocabulary Size Test (VST) has been extensively validated in terms of empirical results. Less is known, however, about expert judgments of content relevance. The VST was constructed and validated according to the…

As vocabulary plays an important part in L2 learning at the beginner level, investigation into vocabulary learning constitutes an essential part of second language acquisition research (Koda, 1989; Laufer, 1992; Meara, 1992). Assuming the case of Japanese, English education can provide a meaningful example. In addition, noting that precise…

The concept of data-driven learning (DDL) -- direct student use of corpora -- has been gaining attention among researchers and teachers. DDL gives learners the chance to take an inductive approach to learning by recognizing patterns in corpus data rather than following abstract rules. However, very few studies focus on presenting clear practices…

VocQGen is an automated tool designed to generate multiple-choice cloze (MCC) questions for vocabulary assessment in second language learning contexts. It leverages several natural language processing (NLP) tools and OpenAI's GPT-4 model to produce MCC items quickly from user-specified word lists. To evaluate its effectiveness, we used the first…

For many teachers and administrators, the degree to which attrition over summer vacation represents a threat to instructed language acquisition remains unclear. In a previous study, Kramer et al. (2019) looked at receptive vocabulary knowledge attrition over summer vacation, found no evidence of attrition using these measures, and called for…

The selection of an appropriate word counting unit (WCU) for the purpose of second/foreign language vocabulary acquisition (SLVA) in the last decade has become a very important and relevant topic in academic circles. However, few studies address on-the-ground teaching practices and perspectives. This mixed-approach study, conducted through an…

Vocableveltest.org is a testing platform on which users can create on- line self-marking meaning-recall (reading or listening) and form-recall (typing) tests that address a number of limitations of the existing vocabulary level tests and vocabulary size tests. A major limitation of many existing vocabulary tests is the written receptive…