Lexical threshold revisited: Lexical text coverage, learners’ vocabulary size and reading comprehension

By B. Laufer, Geke C. Ravenhorst-Kalovski. Reading in a Foreign Language, 2010

688 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We explore the relationship between second language (L2) learners’ vocabulary size, lexical text coverage that their vocabulary provides and their reading comprehension. We also conceptualize “adequate reading comprehension” and look for the lexical threshold for such reading in terms of coverage and vocabulary size. Vocabulary size was measured by the Levels Test, lexical coverage by the newest version of Vocabulary Profile and reading comprehension by a standardized national test. Results show that small increments of vocabulary knowledge contribute to reading comprehension even though they hardly improve text coverage. We suggest two thresholds: an optimal one, which is the knowledge of 8,000 word families yielding the coverage of 98% (including proper nouns) and a minimal one, which is 4,000–5,000 word families resulting in the coverage of 95% (including proper nouns).

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c3b4e099a53048f4b014ef0bd29639f9f8d447e2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. E. Peters
2. Stuart Webb
3. N. Schmitt
4. A. Chang
5. Junyu Cheng
6. J. Matthews
7. A. Pellicer‐Sánchez
8. C. Muñoz

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. E. Peters
2. Stuart Webb
3. N. Schmitt
4. A. Chang
5. C. Muñoz
6. Junyu Cheng
7. J. Matthews
8. A. Pellicer‐Sánchez

Citations in the corpus

• A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching1 (2012, background): “…and how much coverage they provide of the specialized texts in the target domain (e.g. 113 word families with 3.7% coverage of theology lectures (Lessard-Clouston 2010); 623 word families for 12.24% coverage of medical research articles (Wang, Liang & Ge 2008) and 2,000 word families for 95%…”
• Receptive vocabulary size and its relationship to EFL language skills (2018, background): “In a more recent study, Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010) compared university learners’ vocabulary sizes, the text coverage provided by these sizes and reading comprehension in the L2.”
• Lextale_FR A Fast, Free, and Efficient Test to Measure Language Proficiency in French (2013, neutral): “…the 8,000 most common word families (consisting of a lemma plus its inflected forms and its most productive derived forms), they are considered as rather proficient in that language (Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010), even though the language as a whole contains more than 30,000 word families.”
• Explaining listening comprehension among L2 learners of English: the contribution of general language proficiency, vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive awareness (2017, background): “According to Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010), 4000-5000 word families are needed to reach a 95% coverage in reading while 8000-9000 are needed for 98% coverage (Nation, 2006).”
• INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY ACQUISITION THROUGH VIEWING L2 TELEVISION AND FACTORS THAT AFFECT LEARNING (2018, background): “Learners with a larger vocabulary size tend to understand reading and listening texts better than learners with a smaller vocabulary size (Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Noreillie, Kestemont, Heylen, Desmet, & Peters, 2018; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011; Stæhr, 2009).”
• HOW DOES PRIOR WORD KNOWLEDGE AFFECT VOCABULARY LEARNING PROGRESS IN AN EXTENSIVE READING PROGRAM? (2015, background): “Learners with greater vocabulary knowledge are likely to have better reading comprehension because they are likely to know more words in a text (Hu & Nation, 2000 ; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010 ; Qian, 1999 ; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011 ).”
• The relationship between three measures of L2 vocabulary knowledge and L2 listening and reading (2018, background): “…words up to and including the 5,000 frequency level was that knowledge of this range of words is likely to make up the core of lexical knowledge needed for adequate levels of L2 listening and L2 reading (Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Webb & Rodgers, 2009a, 2009b).”
• The Word Part Levels Test (2017, methodology): “Learning the most frequent 10,000 word families may be one of the goals of vocabulary learning, because knowledge of the most frequent 9,000 words plus proper names is desirable for comprehension of authentic written text (Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Nation, 2006).”