Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary

The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the ind...

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Main Author: Schmitt, Norbert
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 1997
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10942/
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author Schmitt, Norbert
author_facet Schmitt, Norbert
author_sort Schmitt, Norbert
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the individual components of vocabulary knowledge, in an attempt to understand the whole by first better understanding the parts. The word knowledge listing proposed by Nation (1990) is adopted in this thesis as a framework from which to study vocabulary. Chapter 1 introduces the word knowledge framework. Chapter 2 provides a literature review which summarizes the research concerning each of the eight types of word knowledge. Chapter 3 reports on a study which attempts to quantify native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Chapter 4 describes how a procedure for weighting word association responses was developed. Chapter 5 does the same for a measure of collocational knowledge. Chapter 6 applies the word knowledge research paradigm to the evaluation of the vocabulary items on the TOEFL test. Chapter 7 reports on a longitudinal study of four non-native subjects which tracked their incremental acquisition of spelling, association, collocation, grammar, and meaning knowledge for eleven words over one year. Chapter 8 examines the data from the longitudinal study to see if the various kinds of word knowledge are learned in a developmental sequence. Chapter 9 concludes the thesis by giving the author's opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the reported course of research.
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spelling nottingham-109422025-02-28T11:10:24Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10942/ Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary Schmitt, Norbert The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the individual components of vocabulary knowledge, in an attempt to understand the whole by first better understanding the parts. The word knowledge listing proposed by Nation (1990) is adopted in this thesis as a framework from which to study vocabulary. Chapter 1 introduces the word knowledge framework. Chapter 2 provides a literature review which summarizes the research concerning each of the eight types of word knowledge. Chapter 3 reports on a study which attempts to quantify native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Chapter 4 describes how a procedure for weighting word association responses was developed. Chapter 5 does the same for a measure of collocational knowledge. Chapter 6 applies the word knowledge research paradigm to the evaluation of the vocabulary items on the TOEFL test. Chapter 7 reports on a longitudinal study of four non-native subjects which tracked their incremental acquisition of spelling, association, collocation, grammar, and meaning knowledge for eleven words over one year. Chapter 8 examines the data from the longitudinal study to see if the various kinds of word knowledge are learned in a developmental sequence. Chapter 9 concludes the thesis by giving the author's opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the reported course of research. 1997 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10942/1/482102.pdf Schmitt, Norbert (1997) Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. vocabulary acquisition second language acquisition word knowledge framework linguistics
spellingShingle vocabulary acquisition
second language acquisition
word knowledge framework
linguistics
Schmitt, Norbert
Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title_full Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title_fullStr Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title_full_unstemmed Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title_short Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
title_sort using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary
topic vocabulary acquisition
second language acquisition
word knowledge framework
linguistics
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10942/