Do dictionary users really look up frequent words? — on the overestimation of the value of corpus-based lexicography

Schryver, Gilles‐Maurice de; Joffe, David; Joffe, Pitta; Hillewaert, Sarah

doi:10.4314/lex.v16i1.51504

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…-nzi [water], -funda (study/learn)), while others list roots with their affixes attached (e.g. amanzi (water), -fundisa (learn + CAUSATIVE, teach) (de Schryver, 2014;de Schryver et al, 2006).…”

Section: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For isiZulu, one estimate is that the first 5,000 headwords (separately listed and defined words, Cambridge University Press, 2021) covers 71% of words in an isiZulu text (de Schryver, 2014). The calculation of high frequency words in African language corpora also depends on how words are lemmatized (de Schryver et al, 2006). IsiZulu and Siswati have agglutinating morphology with a rich noun class system, and verb stems which can take up to nine affixes, including affixes to indicate noun class and tense (Gxilishe et al, 2009).…”

Section: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development and initial validation of productive vocabulary tests for isiZulu, Siswati and English in South Africa

Wilsenach

Schaefer

2022

Language Testing

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Multilingualism in education is encouraged in South Africa, and children are expected to become bilingual and biliterate during the early primary grades. Much focus has been placed on measuring literacy in children’s first language, often the medium of instruction (MOI), and English, the language typically used as MOI from fourth grade. However, vocabulary development in African contexts is underexplored, owing to the cost of existing English standardized tests, and the comparatively fewer linguistically and contextually appropriate vocabulary assessments in African languages. To address this gap, we document the development of corpus-informed contextually appropriate tests of productive vocabulary in isiZulu, Siswati, and English, which were used for a project evaluation. The initial validation phase included 412 children. Both tests were reliable and were concurrently validated with reading comprehension tests in each language, and oral language skills in English. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors that affect the variation in vocabulary knowledge in an African context, including age, grade repetition, and vocabulary in the other language. Only English vocabulary was affected by the remote rural location of the school. We recommend some modifications to the tests before they are validated further in other populations.

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Section: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%