The lexical content of high‐stakes national exams in French, German, and Spanish in England
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8935990 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amber Dudley (0000-0003-2904-9150, Department of Education University of York York UK, corresponding author), Emma Marsden (0000-0003-4086-5765, Department of Education University of York York UK) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 311-338 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Foreign Language Annals (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0015-718X • E-ISSN: 1944-9720 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/flan.12751 |
| OpenAlex | W4391994789 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 53 |
Surprisingly little is known about the number and frequency level of words that beginner‐to‐low‐intermediate 16‐year‐old learners of French, German, and Spanish are expected to know when taking high‐stakes national exams in England. This study presents exploratory analyses of the lexical content of the listening and reading tests of these exams, a corpus totaling 116,647 running words. Specifically, it seeks to understand the number and frequency level of words that (a) this demographic seems to be expected to know and (b) could be needed for awarding organizations to create exams year‐on‐year. Key findings include that the proportion of low(er)‐frequency words in the corpus of exam papers seemed large, given the stage of the learners and the purpose of the assessments. Critically, these low(er)‐frequency words changed at a high rate between papers, likely incurring a heavy reliance on the lexical inferencing abilities of these relatively inexperienced language learners
Content (measure theory · German · Linguistics · Political science · Lexicography and Language Studies · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Second Language Acquisition and Learning
The Nature of vocabulary acquisition
Researching Vocabulary
Assessing Vocabulary
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language
Making and Using Word Lists for Language Learning and Testing
Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition
The Percentage of Words Known in a Text and Reading Comprehension
Vocabulary Knowledge and Advanced Listening Comprehension in English as a Foreign Language
The relationship between vocabulary knowledge and L2 reading/listening comprehension
How Large a Vocabulary is Needed For Reading and Listening?
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Sizes of L2 Learners
The lexical profile of academic spoken English
Lexical Coverage in L1 and L2 Listening Comprehension
Lexical Coverage of Spoken Discourse
Is There a Core General Vocabulary? Introducing the New General Service List
Choosing to Study Modern Foreign Languages
Selling the (Word) Family Silver
The Lemma Dilemma
Use of word lists in a high‐stakes, low‐exposure context
The Sketch Engine
An Analysis of English–Spanish Cognates as a Source of General Academic Language
The influence of exposure, parents, and linguistic distance on young European learners' foreign language comprehension
Word Families
Introducing MultilingProfiler
A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching
A New Academic Word List
Lexical Coverages, Inferencing Unknown Words and Reading Comprehension
Choosing Words to Teach
Learning English Through Out‐of‐School Exposure
Unknown Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension
The Nuclear Word Family List
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |