Untitled

Abstract

The Editorial Team expresses a sincere thank you to Mana Ikawa, who designed the cover for the print version of this issue.Copyright # 2012 Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, ISSN: Online 2187-2759; Print 2187-2767. All articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Vocabulary Learning and InstructionVolume 1, Number 1, August 2012 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7820/vli.v01.1.2187-2759 Foreword: Vocabulary Learning and InstructionIt is with great pleasure that we introduce this inaugural issue of Vocabulary Learning and Instruction. The journal follows the agenda set this year at the first JALT Vocabulary Symposium: to harness the salient aspects of current knowledge in the field of lexical research and to identify future research questions, approaches and directions. Through all the contributions here runs a thread of relevance, context and application, and this commonality of research purpose lends the journal a collaborative and collegial sense. This is further enhanced by the inclusion of commentary chapters, which skilfully extract headline findings and priority areas for further study. In this way the journal reflects the belief that original and rigorous individual research activity realises its true potential when integrated into collaborative contexts, with multi-faceted approaches to shared research questions.Much of the most influential recent research into vocabulary learning and assessment has been conducted by scholars based in Japan. The articles in this issue are representative of this region's rich strand of scholarship, and are testament to the journal's potential to tap into this energetic and purposeful research culture. On visits to Japan-based conferences and symposia we have always been impressed with the quantity and the consistently high quality of vocabulary-focussed research. Research hubs such as the JACET Vocabulary and Reading group, the CALS-Asia Swansea outreach group and the Temple University Japan Applied Linguistics group are central to this, and it is significant that the authors contributing to this journal are representative of these and other research groups. This makes for a research network which shares a clear aim: to further the understanding of lexical processing and the application of lexical assessment and acquisition tools. In contrast to this tight focus, though, studies are informed by literature which is empirically and theoretically wide-ranging. This volume includes studies informed by research into autonomy, fluency, syntax, learning strategies and multi-modality, as well as by approaches pivotal to lexical investigation such as word frequency, lexical richness and word knowledge frameworks. The individual studies are methodologically robust, and are presented in considered, proportionate terms; they offer a reliable foundation from which the commentary papers can identify common strands and mutually informative conclusions.It is important to note that the relevance and applicability of the studies here extends far beyond the Japanese context. Vocabulary...

Vocabulary Gains in a Japanese University Extensive Reading Program

“…The VST is a multiple-choice test of receptive vocabulary, is freely available to teachers and has been thoroughly validated in both its original (Beglar, 2010) and bilingual formats (Nguyen & Nation, 2011). In order to limit guessing an I don't know option was added (following Zhang, 2013) and the full test (140 items) was shortened to 80 items following Nguyen and Nation (2011) and McLean et al, (2014) by removing items that were at frequency levels far beyond the learners' abilities. Following McLean et al (2014) the 80 items comprised of 10 items selected from each 1,000-word frequency level up to the 8,000-word level.…”

“…In order to limit guessing an I don't know option was added (following Zhang, 2013) and the full test (140 items) was shortened to 80 items following Nguyen and Nation (2011) and McLean et al, (2014) by removing items that were at frequency levels far beyond the learners' abilities. Following McLean et al (2014) the 80 items comprised of 10 items selected from each 1,000-word frequency level up to the 8,000-word level. While the expectation was that the books being read would generally contain words within the most frequent 3000 words, as students were of a broad range of abilities and were selecting from a wide range of graded readers (that also contain many lower frequency items) it was decided to use a test that went beyond just the high-frequency band.…”