This study aimed to establish normative data for 145 words using phonological and semantic association tasks with 242 French schoolchildren, ranging from ages 5 (Grande Section) to 8 (Cours Elémentaire 2), providing a fundamental resource for future research and educational planning. The participants were engaged in two primary tasks: a free…

In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can…

The New General Service List (NGSL; Browne, Culligan, & Phillips, 2013b) was published on an interim basis in 2013 as a modern replacement for West's (1953) original General Service List (GSL). This study compared GSL and NGSL coverage of a 6-year, 114-million word section of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and used COCA…

Research has indicated that first language (L1) English speakers acquire derivational knowledge--the ability to understand and produce derived forms of a word--through increased exposure to the language (e.g., Anglin, 1993). Second language (L2) research has shown that L2 English learners tend to have limited productive derivational knowledge in…

While semantic and syntactic properties of verb meaning can impact the success of verb learning at a single age, developmental changes in how these factors influence acquisition are largely unexplored. We ask whether the impact of syntactic and semantic properties on verb vocabulary development varies with age and language ability for toddlers…

Aural vocabulary knowledge (AVK) of high-frequency words is critical for second language listening comprehension. However, learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), despite considerable periods of language study, often do not have the AVK needed for basic communicative competence. A mixed methods approach is applied to determine whether…

The importance of input on language learning cannot be overstated. One method of providing input to learners at a level that is appropriate for them is called extensive reading, in which learners read an abundance of texts. In practice, for learners of English as a second or foreign language, these texts are often books that have been written and…

Teaching vocabularies to young children is critical as vocabulary is related to long-term language, literacy, and academic skills. The current study used a multiple probe design to examine the effects of enhanced milieu teaching with book reading on the use of word approximations in four 2- to 4-year-old females with language delay. The first…

This study investigated the effects of exposure frequency, depth of processing, and activity repetition types on vocabulary learning. In total, 78 South Korean fifth-grade students were divided into four conditions. Students in each condition were asked to read a passage with four of the eight target words (exposure: four times) and the other four…

When learning a language, typically-developing infants face the daunting task of learning both the sounds and the meanings of words. In this dissertation, we focus on a source of variability that complicates the one-to-one relationship between words and their meanings: wordform variability. In Chapter 1 we make a distinction between the micro…

The study explored the correlation between teaching lexical bundles and improving writing skills in English composition courses. The study addressed two research questions. First, to what extent can the explicit teaching of lexical bundles facilitate greater comprehension and retention of the elements of the bundles? Second, the study investigated…

A second language can be learned inside and outside the classroom. In this study we investigated the English and French vocabulary knowledge of 110 Dutch-speaking children (age 10-12), who received 100 hours of instruction in French, whereas their contact with English came from out-of-school exposure only. We examined the role of individual…

Age of acquisition (AoA) is a measure of word complexity which refers to the age at which a word is typically learned. AoA measures have shown strong correlations with reading comprehension, lexical decision times, and writing quality. AoA scores based on both adult and child data have limitations that allow for error in measurement, and increase…

Purpose: This study reexamines the claim that difficulty forming memories of words comprising uncommon sound sequences (i.e., low phonological neighborhood density words) is a determinant of delayed expressive vocabulary development (e.g., Stokes, 2014). Method: We modeled communicative development inventory data from (N = 442) 18-month-old…

Content courses for modern language majors at United States universities are a teaching environment where limited research on second language (L2) vocabulary instruction has taken place. On the surface, it may seem that instructors do not plan vocabulary instruction. This study explores this assumption as well as the potential for learning of…