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.

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. AbstractHigh-frequency vocabulary has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families in English, 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 dictionary defining vocabulary), we argue that high-frequency vocabulary should include the most frequent 3,000 word families in English. We also propose that low-frequency vocabulary boundary should be lowered to the 9,000 level, on the basis that 8,000-9,000 word families is sufficient to provide the lexical resources necessary to be able to read a wide range of authentic texts (Nation 2006). We label the vocabulary between high-frequency (3,000) and low-frequency (9,000+) as MID-FREQUENCY vocabulary. We illustrate the necessity of mid-frequency vocabulary for

No abstract

No abstract

currently sits on the editorial board of Language Testing. His personal website (www.norbertschmitt.co.uk) gives much more information about his research, and also provides a wealth of vocabulary resources for research and teaching. AbstractThere is current research consensus that 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 ESL learners need to know to achieve this crucial level of known-word coverage? A landmark paper by Nation (2006) provides a rather daunting answer. His exploration of the 98% figure with a variety of spoken and written corpora showed that knowledge of around 8,000-9,000 word families is needed for reading and 6,000-7,000 for listening. But is this the definitive picture? A recent study by van Zeeland and & Schmitt (2012) suggests that 95% coverage may be sufficient for listening comprehension, and that this can be reached with the much more manageable figure of 2,000-3,000 word families. Getting these figures right for a variety of text modalities, genres and conditions of reading and listening is essential. Teachers and learners need to be able to set goals, and as Cobb's study of learning opportunities (2007) has shown, coverage percentages and their associated vocabulary knowledge requirements have important implications for the acquisition of new word knowledge through exposure to comprehensible L2 input.