Batia Laufer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3843782 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Batia Laufer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Batia |
| FAMILY NAME | Laufer |
| SIGNATURE | LAUFER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Haifa |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Acquiring productive collocation knowledge via retrieval activities
The study investigated how the acquisition of productive knowledge of incongruent collocations achieved through output retrieval tasks is affected by two factors: (1) teaching method [non-contrastive (NCON): L2-only vs. contrastive (CON): L1–L2 contrastive analysis] and (2) collocation incongruence type (lexical vs. syntactic). Lexically incongruent collocations (LEXcs) are defined as collocations with a similar structure in L1 but a different co…
Lexical Frequency Profiles
How do we know that people use rich and sophisticated vocabulary in their writing? Laufer and Nation (1995) proposed that the vocabulary richness of a text could be measured by a quantitative index called the lexical frequency profile (LFP) which uses the proportion of frequent versus nonfrequent vocabulary in the text.
Lexical Coverage
Lexical coverage refers to the percentage of the running words in a text that certain vocabulary covers and also to the percentage of the text's lexis that a reader, listener, or viewer comprehends. Studies of coverage and comprehension found that, for reading, 95% and 98% are the minimal and optimal coverages, respectively. For listening and viewing, 90–95% coverage figures can suffice. To find out whether learners have reached the necessary cov…
Second‐Language Word Difficulty
Not all words are equally hard to learn. This entry focuses on the linguistic word properties that affect word learnability. There are two main types. One (intralexical) includes the features of the word itself, and the other (interlexical) stems from the interaction between the new word and other familiar words. Intralexical learning difficulties include lack of phonotactic regularity, irregular spelling, synformy, deceptive morphological transp…
Vocabulary and Writing
The relationship between vocabulary and writing is that of mutual contribution and support. Lexical quality of a piece of writing is contingent upon lexical sophistication (the percent of infrequent words), lexical diversity (the ratio of unique words), and collocational competence (the number of accurate and closely associated unique collocations). The use of lexis in writing improves with the growth in proficiency, but the pace of the improveme…
Vocabulary and Writing
We cannot communicate in speech or writing without knowing and using words that convey the ideas that we want to express. This is true for all languages, native and foreign. In the native language, lexical growth is concomitant with our cognitive development and education so that by the time we need to express complex ideas we have acquired the necessary lexis. In foreign languages, however, we usually experience a gap between what we want to con…
Lexical Thresholds for Reading Comprehension
Second Language Word Diffi culty
To understand why some words are easy and some are difficult for second language learners, we should first clarify what is meant by knowing a word.
Verb-Noun Collocations in Second Language Writing
The present study investigates the use of English verb-noun collocations in the writing of native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency levels. For this purpose, we compiled a learner corpus that consists of about 300,000 words of argumentative and descriptive essays. For comparison purposes, we selected LOCNESS, a corpus of young adult native speakers of English. We retrieved the 220 most frequently occurring nouns in the LOCNESS corpus and in…
Second language vocabulary acquisition from language input and from form-focused activities
Interest in L2 vocabulary learning and teaching started long before the nineteen-eighties (for references to earlier studies, see Rob Waring's database http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/vocrefs/vocref.html ) but it declined with the advent of generative linguistics to the point of discrimination and neglect (Meara 1980). In 1986, I argued that vocabulary was about to acquire a legitimate and prominent place within applied linguistics (Laufe…
Examining the Effectiveness of ‘Bilingual Dictionary Plus’ – A Dictionary for Production in a Foreign Language
The study investigated the usefulness of a Hebrew-English-English (L1-L2-L2) mini-dictionary, for production in a foreign language. The dictionary entries included L1 (Hebrew) words, their L2 (English) translation options, usage specifications, semantically related English words, and additional L2 meanings for each translation option. Seventy five students translated thirty six sentences from Hebrew into English using four dictionaries, one dicti…
Lexical Frequency Profiles
This paper is a response to Paul Meara's (2005) critique of the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP). Using simulated data, he challenges the claim that LFP is a sensitive and reliable tool for assessing vocabulary use in L2 speakers. In my response to his paper, I discuss the nature of lexical competence, in light of which LFP results should be interpreted. I question the robustness of computer generated artificial data on which the critique of LFP i…
Size and strength
This article describes the development and validation of a test of vocabulary size and strength. The rst part of the article sets out the theoretical rationale for the test, and describes how the size and strength constructs have been conceptualized and operationalized. The second part of the article focusses on the process of test validation, which involved the testing of the hypotheses implicit in the test design, using both unidimensional and …
Testing Vocabulary Knowledge
In this article, we describe the development and trial of a bilingual computerized test of vocabulary size, the number of words the learner knows, and strength, a combination of four aspects of knowledge of meaning that are assumed to constitute a hierarchy of difficulty: passive recognition (easiest), active recognition, passive recall, and active recall (hardest). The participants were 435 learners of English as a second language. We investigat…
Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language
In the first part of the paper, I challenge some basic assumptions underlying the claim that reading is the major source of vocabulary acquisition in L2: the ‘noticing’ assumption, the ‘guessing ability’ assumption, the ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption, and the ‘cumulative gain’ assumption. In the second part, I report on three experiments in which vocabulary gains from reading were compared with gains from word-focused tasks: completing give…
Some Empirical Evidence for the Involvement Load Hypothesis in Vocabulary Acquisition
EFL learners in two countries participated in two parallel experiments testing whether retention of vocabulary acquired incidentally is contingent on amount of task-induced involvement. Short- and long-term retention of ten unfamiliar words was investigated in three learning tasks (reading comprehension, comprehension plus filling in target words, and composition-writing with target words) with varying "involvement loads"-various combinations of …
A vocabulary-size test of controlled productive ability
It is important in the design of the vocabulary component of a teaching program that teachers are able to discover the state of their learners’ vocabulary knowledge. It is also important that researchers can draw on a variety of vocabulary measures to investigate the nature of vocabulary growth. This study focuses on a controlled production measure of vocabulary consisting of items from five frequency levels, and using a completion item type like…
The Relationship Between Passive and Active Vocabularies
This study investigated the relationships among 3 types of vocabularyknowledge (passive, controlled active, and free active) within the same individuals, taking 4variables into consideration: passive vocabulary size, language learning context, second (L2) orforeign (FL), length of residence in L2 context and, among the Canadians, knowledge of French.Participants were adult learners of English in Israel (N = 79) and in Canada (N = 103) at differen…
The 1996-1997 Language Learning Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Program Announcement of Awards
How Much Lexis is Necessary for Reading Comprehension?
In Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem? Alderson (1984) ascribes poor reading in L2 to four possible causes: (a) poor reading ability in the first language; (b) inadequate knowledge of the foreign language; (c) incorrect strategies for reading in the foreign language; (d) reading strategies in the first language not being employed in the foreign language, due to inadequate knowledge of the foreign language.
Ease and Difficulty in Vocabulary Learning
This paper discusses the relationship between ease/difficulty in learning particular words and some issues in the teaching of vocabulary. Some factors that interfere with learning a word are claimed to be the following: similarity of form between the word and other words (embrace/embarrass, price/prize); morphological similarity between it and other words (industrial/industrious, respectable/respective); deceptive morphological structure (infalli…
Measuring and Explaining the Reading Threshold Needed for English for Academic Purposes Texts
This study attempts to answer two questions concerning the reading threshold needed for English for A cademic Purposes texts: I. How can the threshold be measured and expressed numerically? II. How can it be described in terms of its components, linguistic and conceptual? The measurement of the threshold was conducted by: 1) location of a group of students who were on this level; 2) measuring the reading comprehension level of these students by t…
On the Extrinsic Rule Ordering
Testing Vocabulary Knowledge
In this article, we describe the development and trial of a bilingual computerized test of vocabulary size, the number of words the learner knows, and strength, a combination of four aspects of knowledge of meaning that are assumed to constitute a hierarchy of difficulty: passive recognition (easiest), active recognition, passive recall, and active recall (hardest). The participants were 435 learners of English as a second language. We investigat…
Verb-Noun Collocations in Second Language Writing
The present study investigates the use of English verb-noun collocations in the writing of native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency levels. For this purpose, we compiled a learner corpus that consists of about 300,000 words of argumentative and descriptive essays. For comparison purposes, we selected LOCNESS, a corpus of young adult native speakers of English. We retrieved the 220 most frequently occurring nouns in the LOCNESS corpus and in…
Some Empirical Evidence for the Involvement Load Hypothesis in Vocabulary Acquisition
EFL learners in two countries participated in two parallel experiments testing whether retention of vocabulary acquired incidentally is contingent on amount of task-induced involvement. Short- and long-term retention of ten unfamiliar words was investigated in three learning tasks (reading comprehension, comprehension plus filling in target words, and composition-writing with target words) with varying "involvement loads"-various combinations of …
The Relationship Between Passive and Active Vocabularies
This study investigated the relationships among 3 types of vocabularyknowledge (passive, controlled active, and free active) within the same individuals, taking 4variables into consideration: passive vocabulary size, language learning context, second (L2) orforeign (FL), length of residence in L2 context and, among the Canadians, knowledge of French.Participants were adult learners of English in Israel (N = 79) and in Canada (N = 103) at differen…
Ease and Difficulty in Vocabulary Learning
This paper discusses the relationship between ease/difficulty in learning particular words and some issues in the teaching of vocabulary. Some factors that interfere with learning a word are claimed to be the following: similarity of form between the word and other words (embrace/embarrass, price/prize); morphological similarity between it and other words (industrial/industrious, respectable/respective); deceptive morphological structure (infalli…
Measuring and Explaining the Reading Threshold Needed for English for Academic Purposes Texts
This study attempts to answer two questions concerning the reading threshold needed for English for A cademic Purposes texts: I. How can the threshold be measured and expressed numerically? II. How can it be described in terms of its components, linguistic and conceptual? The measurement of the threshold was conducted by: 1) location of a group of students who were on this level; 2) measuring the reading comprehension level of these students by t…
Examining the Effectiveness of ‘Bilingual Dictionary Plus’ – A Dictionary for Production in a Foreign Language
The study investigated the usefulness of a Hebrew-English-English (L1-L2-L2) mini-dictionary, for production in a foreign language. The dictionary entries included L1 (Hebrew) words, their L2 (English) translation options, usage specifications, semantically related English words, and additional L2 meanings for each translation option. Seventy five students translated thirty six sentences from Hebrew into English using four dictionaries, one dicti…
Second language vocabulary acquisition from language input and from form-focused activities
Interest in L2 vocabulary learning and teaching started long before the nineteen-eighties (for references to earlier studies, see Rob Waring's database http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/vocrefs/vocref.html ) but it declined with the advent of generative linguistics to the point of discrimination and neglect (Meara 1980). In 1986, I argued that vocabulary was about to acquire a legitimate and prominent place within applied linguistics (Laufe…
Lexical Thresholds for Reading Comprehension
On the Extrinsic Rule Ordering
Measuring and Explaining the Reading Threshold Needed for English for Academic Purposes Texts
This study attempts to answer two questions concerning the reading threshold needed for English for A cademic Purposes texts: I. How can the threshold be measured and expressed numerically? II. How can it be described in terms of its components, linguistic and conceptual? The measurement of the threshold was conducted by: 1) location of a group of students who were on this level; 2) measuring the reading comprehension level of these students by t…
Ease and Difficulty in Vocabulary Learning
This paper discusses the relationship between ease/difficulty in learning particular words and some issues in the teaching of vocabulary. Some factors that interfere with learning a word are claimed to be the following: similarity of form between the word and other words (embrace/embarrass, price/prize); morphological similarity between it and other words (industrial/industrious, respectable/respective); deceptive morphological structure (infalli…
How Much Lexis is Necessary for Reading Comprehension?
In Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem? Alderson (1984) ascribes poor reading in L2 to four possible causes: (a) poor reading ability in the first language; (b) inadequate knowledge of the foreign language; (c) incorrect strategies for reading in the foreign language; (d) reading strategies in the first language not being employed in the foreign language, due to inadequate knowledge of the foreign language.
The 1996-1997 Language Learning Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Program Announcement of Awards
The Relationship Between Passive and Active Vocabularies
This study investigated the relationships among 3 types of vocabularyknowledge (passive, controlled active, and free active) within the same individuals, taking 4variables into consideration: passive vocabulary size, language learning context, second (L2) orforeign (FL), length of residence in L2 context and, among the Canadians, knowledge of French.Participants were adult learners of English in Israel (N = 79) and in Canada (N = 103) at differen…
A vocabulary-size test of controlled productive ability
It is important in the design of the vocabulary component of a teaching program that teachers are able to discover the state of their learners’ vocabulary knowledge. It is also important that researchers can draw on a variety of vocabulary measures to investigate the nature of vocabulary growth. This study focuses on a controlled production measure of vocabulary consisting of items from five frequency levels, and using a completion item type like…
Some Empirical Evidence for the Involvement Load Hypothesis in Vocabulary Acquisition
EFL learners in two countries participated in two parallel experiments testing whether retention of vocabulary acquired incidentally is contingent on amount of task-induced involvement. Short- and long-term retention of ten unfamiliar words was investigated in three learning tasks (reading comprehension, comprehension plus filling in target words, and composition-writing with target words) with varying "involvement loads"-various combinations of …
Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language
In the first part of the paper, I challenge some basic assumptions underlying the claim that reading is the major source of vocabulary acquisition in L2: the ‘noticing’ assumption, the ‘guessing ability’ assumption, the ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption, and the ‘cumulative gain’ assumption. In the second part, I report on three experiments in which vocabulary gains from reading were compared with gains from word-focused tasks: completing give…
Size and strength
This article describes the development and validation of a test of vocabulary size and strength. The rst part of the article sets out the theoretical rationale for the test, and describes how the size and strength constructs have been conceptualized and operationalized. The second part of the article focusses on the process of test validation, which involved the testing of the hypotheses implicit in the test design, using both unidimensional and …
Testing Vocabulary Knowledge
In this article, we describe the development and trial of a bilingual computerized test of vocabulary size, the number of words the learner knows, and strength, a combination of four aspects of knowledge of meaning that are assumed to constitute a hierarchy of difficulty: passive recognition (easiest), active recognition, passive recall, and active recall (hardest). The participants were 435 learners of English as a second language. We investigat…
Lexical Frequency Profiles
This paper is a response to Paul Meara's (2005) critique of the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP). Using simulated data, he challenges the claim that LFP is a sensitive and reliable tool for assessing vocabulary use in L2 speakers. In my response to his paper, I discuss the nature of lexical competence, in light of which LFP results should be interpreted. I question the robustness of computer generated artificial data on which the critique of LFP i…
Examining the Effectiveness of ‘Bilingual Dictionary Plus’ – A Dictionary for Production in a Foreign Language
The study investigated the usefulness of a Hebrew-English-English (L1-L2-L2) mini-dictionary, for production in a foreign language. The dictionary entries included L1 (Hebrew) words, their L2 (English) translation options, usage specifications, semantically related English words, and additional L2 meanings for each translation option. Seventy five students translated thirty six sentences from Hebrew into English using four dictionaries, one dicti…
Second language vocabulary acquisition from language input and from form-focused activities
Interest in L2 vocabulary learning and teaching started long before the nineteen-eighties (for references to earlier studies, see Rob Waring's database http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/vocrefs/vocref.html ) but it declined with the advent of generative linguistics to the point of discrimination and neglect (Meara 1980). In 1986, I argued that vocabulary was about to acquire a legitimate and prominent place within applied linguistics (Laufe…
Verb-Noun Collocations in Second Language Writing
The present study investigates the use of English verb-noun collocations in the writing of native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency levels. For this purpose, we compiled a learner corpus that consists of about 300,000 words of argumentative and descriptive essays. For comparison purposes, we selected LOCNESS, a corpus of young adult native speakers of English. We retrieved the 220 most frequently occurring nouns in the LOCNESS corpus and in…
Second Language Word Diffi culty
To understand why some words are easy and some are difficult for second language learners, we should first clarify what is meant by knowing a word.
Vocabulary and Writing
We cannot communicate in speech or writing without knowing and using words that convey the ideas that we want to express. This is true for all languages, native and foreign. In the native language, lexical growth is concomitant with our cognitive development and education so that by the time we need to express complex ideas we have acquired the necessary lexis. In foreign languages, however, we usually experience a gap between what we want to con…
Lexical Thresholds for Reading Comprehension
Vocabulary and Writing
The relationship between vocabulary and writing is that of mutual contribution and support. Lexical quality of a piece of writing is contingent upon lexical sophistication (the percent of infrequent words), lexical diversity (the ratio of unique words), and collocational competence (the number of accurate and closely associated unique collocations). The use of lexis in writing improves with the growth in proficiency, but the pace of the improveme…
Lexical Coverage
Lexical coverage refers to the percentage of the running words in a text that certain vocabulary covers and also to the percentage of the text's lexis that a reader, listener, or viewer comprehends. Studies of coverage and comprehension found that, for reading, 95% and 98% are the minimal and optimal coverages, respectively. For listening and viewing, 90–95% coverage figures can suffice. To find out whether learners have reached the necessary cov…
Second‐Language Word Difficulty
Not all words are equally hard to learn. This entry focuses on the linguistic word properties that affect word learnability. There are two main types. One (intralexical) includes the features of the word itself, and the other (interlexical) stems from the interaction between the new word and other familiar words. Intralexical learning difficulties include lack of phonotactic regularity, irregular spelling, synformy, deceptive morphological transp…
Acquiring productive collocation knowledge via retrieval activities
The study investigated how the acquisition of productive knowledge of incongruent collocations achieved through output retrieval tasks is affected by two factors: (1) teaching method [non-contrastive (NCON): L2-only vs. contrastive (CON): L1–L2 contrastive analysis] and (2) collocation incongruence type (lexical vs. syntactic). Lexically incongruent collocations (LEXcs) are defined as collocations with a similar structure in L1 but a different co…
Lexical Frequency Profiles
How do we know that people use rich and sophisticated vocabulary in their writing? Laufer and Nation (1995) proposed that the vocabulary richness of a text could be measured by a quantitative index called the lexical frequency profile (LFP) which uses the proportion of frequent versus nonfrequent vocabulary in the text.
Linguistics (20 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Second Language Acquisition and Learning (17 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Vocabulary (13 works) · Natural language processing (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (8 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (7 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works)