Investigating lexical diversity and lexical sophistication of productive vocabulary in the written discourse of Indonesian EFL learners

Abstract

This paper reports the findings in investigating lexical diversity and lexical sophistication of productive vocabulary in the written discourse of Indonesian EFL learners. Thirty one students at high school level participated in this study; 15 students were from B1 level and 16 students were from B2 level according to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Students’ written compositions were used as the main data for this study. The gauge was done based on the result of the calculation of lexical frequency profile (LFP). The result of the calculation showed that the lexical diversity index of students at higher level was greater than that of students at lower level. In addition, based on the calculation per LFP category, it was found that the two groups shared similar patterns of lexical diversity index in which most varied vocabulary used in their writings falls into the second most common 1000 wordlist, followed by vocabulary that belongs to “not in the lists” category and AWL, respectively. Subsequently, the first common 1000 words category became the least varied words used by the learners. In terms of lexical sophistication, it was found that the percentage of advanced vocabulary used by less proficient learners was slightly larger than the percentage of advanced vocabulary used by more proficient learners. However, there was no significant difference found between two groups of learners in terms of lexical diversity and lexical sophistication.

Lexical richness of newspaper editorials published in Southeast Asian countries

“…A token is any occurrence of a word form regardless of how many times it appears in the text (Juanggo, 2018). As we can see from Table 4, in term of tokens, an editorial text published in News Strait Times Malaysia contains 564 tokens, consists of the majority of K1 (the first 1000 most frequent words) amount of 414 words, K2 (the second 1000 most frequent words) amount of 21 words, AWL (Academic word List) that accounts for 22 words and off-list (words that do not belong to the three categories) amount of 107 words.…”

“…The last is an editorial published in Bangkok Post from Thailand that produces 576 tokens consists of 409 words of K1, 53 words of K2, 32 words of AWL and 82 words of off-list category. Unlike tokens, word types are any forms of a word counted only once regardless of how many times it might appear in the text (Juanggo, 2018). In terms of types in the editorial text published in News Strait Times Malaysia, 176 out of 283 total word types belong to the K1 category, 20-word types belong to K2 and AWL and 67-word types belong to off-list.…”

“…It has been long accepted that vocabulary plays a major role in second language learning and the main difference between L2 and native speakers or among L2 speakers themselves is the number of vocabularies they use in the language production, either oral or written (Juanggo, 2018). Laufer and Nation (1995, p. 307) stressed out that "a well-used rich vocabulary is likely to have a positive effect on the reader".…”

“…Laufer and Nation (1995, p. 307) stressed out that "a well-used rich vocabulary is likely to have a positive effect on the reader". Juanggo (2018) writes that there are several measures that have been coined to evaluate L2 speakers' vocabulary use, such as lexical diversity/variation (LV) which primarily assesses how varied vocabulary is used and lexical sophistication (LS) which deals with the proportion of advanced vocabulary employed in the writings.…”

“…While the differences in TTR and academic words are significant, the differences in the use of a 2000-word level and off-list are not significant. Juanggo (2018) investigates lexical diversity and lexical sophistication of productive vocabulary in the written discourse of Indonesian EFL learners. The results of the calculation done by using the lexical frequency profile (LFP) show that the lexical diversity index of students at a higher level was greater than that of students at a lower level.…”