Norbert Schmitt
Biographic Data
| ID | 980360 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Norbert Schmitt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Norbert |
| FAMILY NAME | Schmitt |
| SIGNATURE | SCHMITT N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8590-5471 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 294 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Time to adopt a more sophisticated perspective of vocabulary knowledge and acquisition
Formulaic Language in Second Language Learning and Use
The knowledge of formulaic language (aka formulaic sequences) is fundamental for fluent and effective language use. Research in this area has been highly prolific in the last couple of decades and has yielded some very useful insights into the role of formulaic language in language learning and use. This chapter seeks to provide an overview of formulaic language as a linguistic phenomenon from four different perspectives. The first one concerns t…
Norbert Schmitt's essential bookshelf: Formulaic language
In this series, Language Teaching invites a well-established scholar to make a personal choice of 12 works that he or she regards as essential reading for those interested in an historical and contemporary overview of the key work in the area chosen for study
Vocabulary in Language Teaching
Moving the field of vocabulary assessment forward: The need for more rigorous test development and validation
Recently, a large number of vocabulary tests have been made available to language teachers, testers, and researchers. Unfortunately, most of them have been launched with inadequate validation evidence. The field of language testing has become increasingly more rigorous in the area of test validation, but developers of vocabulary tests have generally not given validation sufficient attention in the past. This paper argues for more rigorous and sys…
Formulaic Language and Collocation
It is now widely accepted that vocabulary has a strong tendency to occur in multiple word combinations rather than in single words held by grammar rules. Formulaic language is very widespread in language use, in both written and spoken modes. Research shows that the two modes contain more than half of formulaic sequences. Similarly, it has been suggested that formulaic sequences make up from one third to a half of our language. Also, unsurprising…
Reading Collocations in an L2: Do Collocation Processing Benefits Extend to Non-Adjacent Collocations?
Various studies have consistently shown that collocations are processed faster than matched control phrases, both in L1 and in L2. Most of these studies focused on adjacent collocations (e.g. provide information). However, research in corpus linguistics normally uses a span to identify collocations (e.g. plus or minus four words), and these non-adjacent collocations (e.g. provide some of the information) occur very frequently in language. Neverth…
Understanding vocabulary acquisition, instruction, and assessment: A research agenda
This paper suggests six areas of vocabulary research which the author believes would be fruitful for future research. They include (1) developing a practical model of vocabulary acquisition, (2) understanding how vocabulary knowledge develops from receptive to productive mastery, (3) getting lexical teaching/learning principles into vocabulary and language textbooks, (4) exploring extramural language exposure and how it can best facilitate vocabu…
How much vocabulary is needed to use English? Replication of van Zeeland & Schmitt (2012), Nation (2006) and Cobb (2007)
There is current research consensus that second language (L2) learners are able to adequately comprehend general English written texts if they know 98% of the words that occur in the materials. This important finding prompts an important question: How much English vocabulary do English as a second language (ESL) learners need to know to achieve this crucial level of known-word coverage? A landmark paper by Nation (2006) provides a rather daunting…
How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have: The effects of frequency and amount of exposure
Many scholars believe that collocations are difficult to learn and use by L2 learners. However, some research suggests that learners often know more collocations than commonly thought. This study tested 108 Spanish learners of English to measure their productive knowledge of 50 collocations, which varied according to corpus frequency, t -score, and MI score. The participants produced a mean score of 56.6% correct, suggesting that our learners kne…
Assessing vocabulary size through multiple-choice formats: Issues with guessing and sampling rates
In most tests of vocabulary size, knowledge is assessed through multiple-choice formats. Despite advantages such as ease of scoring, multiple-choice tests (MCT) are accompanied with problems. One of the more central issues has to do with guessing and the presence of other construct-irrelevant strategies that can lead to overestimation of scores. A further challenge when designing vocabulary size tests is that of sampling rate. How many words cons…
A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching
The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and acquisition studies, the amount of vocabulary necessary for English usage, the range of graded readers, and dic…
Size and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge: What the Research Shows
When discussing vocabulary, a distinction is often made between size of vocabulary (number of known words) and depth of knowledge (how well those words are known). However, the relationship between the two constructs is still unclear. Some scholars argue that there is little real difference between the two, while regression analyses show that depth typically adds unique explanatory power compared to size alone. Ultimately, the relationship betwee…
Lexical Coverage in L1 and L2 Listening Comprehension: The Same or Different from Reading Comprehension?
Most research on L2 reading comprehension has indicated that 98 per cent lexical coverage provides adequate comprehension of written text. This figure has been transferred to listening comprehension and has been used to set vocabulary size targets for L2 learners. This study directly investigates coverage in regard to listening comprehension, to determine whether such transfer is reasonable. The coverage of four spoken informal narrative passages…
Incidental vocabulary acquisition through L2 listening: A dimensions approach
Explicit and Implicit Lexical Knowledge: Acquisition of Collocations Under Different Input Conditions
To date, there has been little empirical research exploring the relationship between implicit and explicit lexical knowledge (of collocations). As a first step in addressing this gap, two laboratory experiments were conducted that evaluate different conditions (enriched, enhanced, and decontextualized) under which both adult native speakers (Experiment 1) and advanced nonnative speakers of English (Experiment 2) acquire collocations. Three differ…
Formulaic Language and Collocation
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units.
A Phrasal Expressions List
There is little dispute that formulaic sequences form an important part of the lexicon, but to date there has been no principled way to prioritize the inclusion of such items in pedagogic materials, such as ESL/EFL textbooks or tests of vocabulary knowledge. While wordlists have been used for decades, they have only provided information about individual word forms (e.g. the General Service List (West 1953) and the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000…
Scoring Yes–No vocabulary tests: Reaction time vs. nonword approaches
Despite a number of research studies investigating the Yes–No vocabulary test format, one main question remains unanswered: What is the best scoring procedure to adjust for testee overestimation of vocabulary knowledge? Different scoring methodologies have been proposed based on the inclusion and selection of nonwords in the test. However, there is currently no consensus on the best adjustment procedure using these nonwords. Two studies were cond…
Difficulties with vocabulary word form: The case of Arabic ESL learners
Words as Tools: Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition
There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students’ success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this review, we discuss the role of academic vocabulary within academic language, examine recent research o…
The Percentage of Words Known in a Text and Reading Comprehension
This study focused on the relationship between percentage of vocabulary known in a text and level of comprehension of the same text. Earlier studies have estimated the percentage of vocabulary necessary for second language learners to understand written texts as being between 95% ( Laufer, 1989 ) and 98% ( Hu & Nation, 2000 ). In this study, 661 participants from 8 countries completed a vocabulary measure based on words drawn from 2 texts, read t…
The Word Associates Format: Validation evidence
Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students’ WAF test-taking behavior along with interviews on featured target words to determine how accurately the most com…
Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speakers
Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ( at the end of the day — ‘eventually’), literally ( at the end of the day — ‘in the evening’), and novel phrases ( at the end of the war). Native speaker results indicate a processing advantage for idioms over novel phrases, as evidenced by fewer and shorter fixations. F…
Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Research Manual
The book overviews a wide range of vocabulary research methodologies, and offers practical advice on how to carry out valid and reliable research on first and second language vocabulary. It includes a
Words as Tools: Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition
There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students’ success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this review, we discuss the role of academic vocabulary within academic language, examine recent research o…
Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speakers
Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ( at the end of the day — ‘eventually’), literally ( at the end of the day — ‘in the evening’), and novel phrases ( at the end of the war). Native speaker results indicate a processing advantage for idioms over novel phrases, as evidenced by fewer and shorter fixations. F…
Adult learners’ retention of collocations from exposure
Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim that adult second language learners take an essentially non-formulaic approach to language learning, an…
Size and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge: What the Research Shows
When discussing vocabulary, a distinction is often made between size of vocabulary (number of known words) and depth of knowledge (how well those words are known). However, the relationship between the two constructs is still unclear. Some scholars argue that there is little real difference between the two, while regression analyses show that depth typically adds unique explanatory power compared to size alone. Ultimately, the relationship betwee…
Incidental vocabulary acquisition through L2 listening: A dimensions approach
A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching
The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and acquisition studies, the amount of vocabulary necessary for English usage, the range of graded readers, and dic…
Tracking the Incremental Acquisition of Second Language Vocabulary: A Longitudinal Study
Previous vocabulary research has focused on the size of lexicons and the number of words learned through various activities. To date, this type of research has generated little understanding of how individual words are acquired. To explore this issue, I tracked the acquisition of 11 words over the course of a year for 3 adult learners with advanced proficiency in English. I measured 4 kinds of word knowledge: spelling, associations, grammatical i…
Explicit and Implicit Lexical Knowledge: Acquisition of Collocations Under Different Input Conditions
To date, there has been little empirical research exploring the relationship between implicit and explicit lexical knowledge (of collocations). As a first step in addressing this gap, two laboratory experiments were conducted that evaluate different conditions (enriched, enhanced, and decontextualized) under which both adult native speakers (Experiment 1) and advanced nonnative speakers of English (Experiment 2) acquire collocations. Three differ…
Toward a Model of Motivated Vocabulary Learning: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach
This study presents a structural model that integrates vocabulary knowledge and motivation with six latent variables: the initial appraisal of vocabulary learning experience, self-regulating capacity of vocabulary learning, strategic vocabulary learning involvement, mastery of vocabulary learning tactics, vocabulary knowledge, and postappraisal of the effectiveness of vocabulary learning tactics. The model suggests that motivated vocabulary learn…
Derivative Word Forms: What Do Learners Know
Some teachers and researchers may assume that when a learner knows one member of a word family (e.g., stimulate), the other members (e.g., stimulant, stimulative) are relatively easy to learn. Although knowing one member of a word family undoubtedly facilitates receptive mastery of the other members, the small amount of previous research has sug-gested that L2 learners often have problems producing the various derivative forms within a word famil…
Quantifying word association responses: What is native-like
Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Research Manual
The book overviews a wide range of vocabulary research methodologies, and offers practical advice on how to carry out valid and reliable research on first and second language vocabulary. It includes a
How much vocabulary is needed to use English? Replication of van Zeeland & Schmitt (2012), Nation (2006) and Cobb (2007)
There is current research consensus that second language (L2) learners are able to adequately comprehend general English written texts if they know 98% of the words that occur in the materials. This important finding prompts an important question: How much English vocabulary do English as a second language (ESL) learners need to know to achieve this crucial level of known-word coverage? A landmark paper by Nation (2006) provides a rather daunting…
Exploring native and non-native intuitions of word frequency
Native speakers have intuitions about how frequently words occur in their language, but methodological limitations have not previously allowed a detailed description of these intuitions. This study asked native and non-native speakers to give judgements of frequency for near synonyms in 12 lexical sets and compared those responses to modern corpus word counts. The native speakers were able to discern the core word in the lexical sets either 77% o…
Moving the field of vocabulary assessment forward: The need for more rigorous test development and validation
Recently, a large number of vocabulary tests have been made available to language teachers, testers, and researchers. Unfortunately, most of them have been launched with inadequate validation evidence. The field of language testing has become increasingly more rigorous in the area of test validation, but developers of vocabulary tests have generally not given validation sufficient attention in the past. This paper argues for more rigorous and sys…
Understanding vocabulary acquisition, instruction, and assessment: A research agenda
This paper suggests six areas of vocabulary research which the author believes would be fruitful for future research. They include (1) developing a practical model of vocabulary acquisition, (2) understanding how vocabulary knowledge develops from receptive to productive mastery, (3) getting lexical teaching/learning principles into vocabulary and language textbooks, (4) exploring extramural language exposure and how it can best facilitate vocabu…
Difficulties with vocabulary word form: The case of Arabic ESL learners
Norbert Schmitt's essential bookshelf: Formulaic language
In this series, Language Teaching invites a well-established scholar to make a personal choice of 12 works that he or she regards as essential reading for those interested in an historical and contemporary overview of the key work in the area chosen for study
Researching Vocabulary Through a Word Knowledge Framework: Word Associations and Verbal Suffixes
This study examines how two types of word knowledge, word associations and grammatical suffix knowledge, change over time both receptively and productively. Ninety-five secondary and postsecondary Japanese students were tested on three word associations and inflectional and derivational suffixes for each of 20 verbs, once near the beginning of their academic year and once near the end. The results showed their average vocabulary gain was 330 word…
Measuring collocational knowledge: Key Issues and an Experimental Assessment Procedure
Preview this article: Measuring collocational knowledge, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/itl.119-120.03sch-1.gif
Quantifying word association responses: What is native-like
Tracking the Incremental Acquisition of Second Language Vocabulary: A Longitudinal Study
Previous vocabulary research has focused on the size of lexicons and the number of words learned through various activities. To date, this type of research has generated little understanding of how individual words are acquired. To explore this issue, I tracked the acquisition of 11 words over the course of a year for 3 adult learners with advanced proficiency in English. I measured 4 kinds of word knowledge: spelling, associations, grammatical i…
The relationship between Toefl vocabulary items and meaning, association, collocation and word-class knowledge
The relationship between Toefl vocabulary items and meaning, association, collocation and word-class knowledge
In this paper the author argues that issues of construct validity should be given more prominence in the validation of lexical test items. One way of determining the construct validity of vocabulary items is to interview subjects directly after taking the items to ascertain what is actually known about the target words in question. This approach was combined with the framework of lexical competency proposed by Nation (1990) in an exploratory stud…
Exploring native and non-native intuitions of word frequency
Native speakers have intuitions about how frequently words occur in their language, but methodological limitations have not previously allowed a detailed description of these intuitions. This study asked native and non-native speakers to give judgements of frequency for near synonyms in 12 lexical sets and compared those responses to modern corpus word counts. The native speakers were able to discern the core word in the lexical sets either 77% o…
Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test
The Vocabulary Levels Test has been widely used in language assessment and vocabulary research despite never having been properly validated. This article reports on a study which uses a range of analysis techniques to present validity evidence, and to explore the equivalence of two revised and expanded versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test
Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test
Derivative Word Forms: What Do Learners Know
Some teachers and researchers may assume that when a learner knows one member of a word family (e.g., stimulate), the other members (e.g., stimulant, stimulative) are relatively easy to learn. Although knowing one member of a word family undoubtedly facilitates receptive mastery of the other members, the small amount of previous research has sug-gested that L2 learners often have problems producing the various derivative forms within a word famil…
Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, processing and use
Formulaic sequences (FS) are now recognized as an essential element of language use. However, research on FS has generally been limited to a focus on description, or on the place of FS in L1 acquisition. This volume opens new directions in FS research, concentrating on how FS are acquired and processed by the mind, both in the L1 and L2. The ten original studies in the volume illustrate the L2 acquisition of FS, the relationship between L1 and L2…
Vocabulary coverage according to spoken discourse context
A New Approach to Assessing Strategic Learning: The Case of Self-Regulation in Vocabulary Acquisition
This article draws on work done in educational psychology to propose a new approach to generating a psychometrically-based measure of second language learners’ strategic learning, operationalized as their self-regulatory capacity, as an alternative to the scales traditionally used to quantify language learning strategy use. The self-regulation instrument was developed through a three-phase process, focusing on the realm of vocabulary learning. Th…
L2 Learner Production and Processing of Collocation: A Multi-study Perspective
This article presents a series of studies focusing on L2 production and processing of adjective–noun collocations (e.g., social services). In Study 1, 810 adjective–noun collocations were extracted from 31 essays written by Russian learners of English. About half of these collocations appeared frequently in the British National Corpus (BNC); one-quarter failed to appear in the BNC at all, while another quarter had a very low BNC frequency. Based …
Formulaic Sequences: Are They Processed More Quickly than Nonformulaic Language by Native and Nonnative Speakers?
It is generally accepted that formulaic sequences like take the bull by the horns serve an important function in discourse and are widespread in language. It is also generally believed that these sequences are processed more efficiently because single memorized units, even though they are composed of a sequence of individual words, can be processed more quickly and easily than the same sequences of words which are generated creatively (Pawley and…
Toward a Model of Motivated Vocabulary Learning: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach
This study presents a structural model that integrates vocabulary knowledge and motivation with six latent variables: the initial appraisal of vocabulary learning experience, self-regulating capacity of vocabulary learning, strategic vocabulary learning involvement, mastery of vocabulary learning tactics, vocabulary knowledge, and postappraisal of the effectiveness of vocabulary learning tactics. The model suggests that motivated vocabulary learn…
To what extent do native and non-native writers make use of collocations?
Usage-based models claim that first language learning is based on the frequency-based analysis of memorised phrases. It is not clear though, whether adult second language learning works in the same way. It has been claimed that non-native language lacks idiomatic formulas, suggesting that learners neglect phrases, focusing instead on orthographic words. While a number of studies challenge the claim that non-native language lacks formulaicity, the…
Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Research Manual
The book overviews a wide range of vocabulary research methodologies, and offers practical advice on how to carry out valid and reliable research on first and second language vocabulary. It includes a
Adult learners’ retention of collocations from exposure
Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim that adult second language learners take an essentially non-formulaic approach to language learning, an…
The Percentage of Words Known in a Text and Reading Comprehension
This study focused on the relationship between percentage of vocabulary known in a text and level of comprehension of the same text. Earlier studies have estimated the percentage of vocabulary necessary for second language learners to understand written texts as being between 95% ( Laufer, 1989 ) and 98% ( Hu & Nation, 2000 ). In this study, 661 participants from 8 countries completed a vocabulary measure based on words drawn from 2 texts, read t…
The Word Associates Format: Validation evidence
Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students’ WAF test-taking behavior along with interviews on featured target words to determine how accurately the most com…
Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speakers
Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ( at the end of the day — ‘eventually’), literally ( at the end of the day — ‘in the evening’), and novel phrases ( at the end of the war). Native speaker results indicate a processing advantage for idioms over novel phrases, as evidenced by fewer and shorter fixations. F…
Formulaic Language and Collocation
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units.
A Phrasal Expressions List
There is little dispute that formulaic sequences form an important part of the lexicon, but to date there has been no principled way to prioritize the inclusion of such items in pedagogic materials, such as ESL/EFL textbooks or tests of vocabulary knowledge. While wordlists have been used for decades, they have only provided information about individual word forms (e.g. the General Service List (West 1953) and the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000…
Scoring Yes–No vocabulary tests: Reaction time vs. nonword approaches
Despite a number of research studies investigating the Yes–No vocabulary test format, one main question remains unanswered: What is the best scoring procedure to adjust for testee overestimation of vocabulary knowledge? Different scoring methodologies have been proposed based on the inclusion and selection of nonwords in the test. However, there is currently no consensus on the best adjustment procedure using these nonwords. Two studies were cond…
Linguistics (39 works) · Second Language Acquisition and Learning (37 works) · Computer Science (33 works) · Psychology (33 works) · Vocabulary (27 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (20 works) · Natural language processing (15 works) · Vocabulary development (15 works) · Text Readability and Simplification (13 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (12 works)