Some Thoughts on the Issue of Core Vocabularies

Stein, Gabriele

doi:10.1093/applin/amw027

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Empirical analysis of unknown items in relation to our anchor words has shed new light on how frequencies, usefulness/topicality, coreness and language learning may be related (see 6.3). Frequency has been claimed to be a consequence of being core, and not vice versa (Stein, 2017), although frequency is often taken as a proxy of coreness. The problem with this type of simplification is that not all core items are frequent (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One is the well-known issue of what core vocabulary actually is (e.g. Stein, 2017;Carter, 1982). The other is a relatively new topic connected to the reliability of crowdsourcing non-expert judgments as a method of producing linguistic annotations (e.g.…”

Section: Example 1: Illustration Of Relative Ranking Of An Unknown Itemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, the high frequency of the core vocabulary is a reflection of the usefulness of core vocabulary. Stein (2017) warns against using frequency and usefulness as defining characteristics of core vocabulary. These properties may be used as a proxy for identifying core items, but one needs to keep in mind that not all frequent or useful items belong to the core vocabulary; and not all core items are equally frequent or equally useful (cf.…”

Section: Core Vocabulary -A Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The connection between the objective token frequency and the notion of usefulness, however, is not always clear (cf. Stein, 2017). Nonetheless, even though such lists will never be beyond criticism at a theoretical level, they make it possible, with a certain degree of objectivity, to address some central assumptions about vocabulary and its hypothetical importance to language as a system and to language learners in particular.…”

Section: Core Vocabularies For Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crowdsourcing ratings for single lexical items

Volodina

Alfter

Tiedemann³

2022

SLO2.0

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In this study, we investigate theoretical and practical issues connected to differentiating between core and peripheral vocabulary at different levels of linguistic proficiency using statistical approaches combined with crowdsourcing. We also investigate whether crowdsourcing second language learners’ rankings can be used for assigning levels to unseen vocabulary. The study is performed on Swedish single-word items. The four hypotheses we examine are: (1) there is core vocabulary for each proficiency level, but this is only true until CEFR level B2 (upper-intermediate); (2) core vocabulary shows more systematicity in its behavior and usage, whereas peripheral items have more idiosyncratic behavior; (3) given that we have truly core items (aka anchor items) for each level, we can place any new unseen item in relation to the identified core items by using a series of comparative judgment tasks, this way assigning a “target” level for a previously unseen item; and (4) non-experts will perform on par with experts in a comparative judgment setting. The hypotheses have been largely confirmed: In relation to (1) and (2), our results show that there seems to be some systematicity in core vocabulary for early to mid-levels (A1-B1) while we find less systematicity for higher levels (B2-C1). In relation to (3), we suggest crowdsourcing word rankings using comparative judgment with known anchor words as a method to assign a “target” level to unseen words. With regard to (4), we confirm the previous findings that non-experts, in our case language learners, can be effectively used for the linguistic annotation tasks in a comparative judgment setting.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Example 1: Illustration Of Relative Ranking Of An Unknown Itemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Core Vocabulary -A Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Core Vocabularies For Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crowdsourcing ratings for single lexical items

Volodina

Alfter

Tiedemann³

2022

SLO2.0

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“…The final new-GSL was the union of these two intersections and consists of 2,494 lemmas covering between 80.1 and 81.7 percent of the text in the source corpora. Stein (2017) praised this approach for its transparent methodology, and particularly its use of multiple corpora representing a breadth of text types. Her primary criticism was that its selection principles do not seem "to justify the service element in its name" (p. 762) and suggests that a "defining vocabulary" (p. 760) should serve as the basis for a general vocabulary wordlist for L2 learners.…”

Section: The New-gslmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is there a core general vocabulary for Czech? Introducing the Czech General Service List

Challis

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The current study presents the Czech General Service List (CGSL), which was designed to capture the core vocabulary of written and spoken Czech which is useful to Czech as a second language learners (CSLLs). The CGSL is a result of robust comparison of five Czech language corpora (SYN2020, csTenTen17, Koditex, ORALv1, and ORTOFONv2) containing over 12 billion running words. These five corpora represent a variety of corpus sizes, designs, and text types of both written and spoken Czech. This study investigates the overlap between the top 10,000 words in these corpora based on their normalized average reduced frequency (ARFn), which is a measure that takes into consideration both frequency and dispersion. This study also investigates the overlap and rank correlation between words from the written and spoken corpora, respectively. Significant differences were found between words used in written and spoken Czech, so the CGSL was built to contain three types of words: 1) core words of Czech, 2) core words of written Czech, and 3) core words of spoken Czech. Finally, this study compared the words on the CGSL to words on pedagogical wordlists from Czech textbooks designed for L1 English speaking CSLLs and found there to be significant differences between the two. This suggests that future CSL materials informed by the CGSL might have a different effect on Czech learning than the currently existing CSL materials. CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTIONCzech is an important world language which presents unique challenges for learners who speak English as a first language (L1), including the acquisition of new vocabulary. This study opens a scholarly discussion about how corpus-based methods and data can help Czech as a second language learners (CSLLs) to prioritize core vocabulary items from written and spoken Czech. The theories, questions, and methodologies used in this study are also applicable to other less-commonly taught languages which currently lack corpus-based pedagogical materials and approaches to learning.According to Nation, a leading scholar on second language (L2) vocabulary research and a major contributor to the literature on this topic (Coxhead, 2010), the first goal of L2 vocabulary learning should be to know which vocabulary is useful for learners (Nation, 2013). Recent pedagogically motivated vocabulary research connects usefulness for learners with frequency information as opposed to native speaker intuition (Alderson, 2007;Gardner & Davies, 2014;Garnier & Schmitt, 2015;Lei & Liu, 2016). Receptive and productive knowledge of L2 words correlate with word frequency, and frequent words are encountered and used more often by learners (Ellis, 2014;Garnier & Schmitt, 2015).Brezina and Gablasova (2015) agree that while "word frequency alone is not a reliable measure for selecting words important for learners" (p. 3), it is possible to quantify a word's importance for learners by measuring its frequency, dispersion within a corpus, and dispersion across multiple large language corpora representing a variety of situational ...

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Relationships between lexical coverage, learner knowledge, and teacher perceptions of the usefulness of high‐frequency words

Dang

Webb

Coxhead

2022

Foreign Language Annals

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Recently researchers have proposed using information from teachers and learners to supplement the information from corpora in the selection of the most useful words for foreign language learners. Yet the extent to which these data sets correlate to one another is unclear. This study explicitly investigated the relationships between (a) the lexical coverage in 18 corpora, (b) the knowledge of 275 Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, and (c) the perceptions of 78 EFL teachers of the usefulness of 973 high-frequency words. The correlations between lexical coverage and the other two factors were significant but small, and the correlations between learner vocabulary knowledge and teacher perceptions were large. Teacher perceptions better-predicted learner knowledge than lexical coverage. This study confirms the value of lexical coverage as a key criterion to select words for foreign language learners, and also highlights the importance

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Some Thoughts on the Issue of Core Vocabularies

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Crowdsourcing ratings for single lexical items

Crowdsourcing ratings for single lexical items

Is there a core general vocabulary for Czech? Introducing the Czech General Service List

Relationships between lexical coverage, learner knowledge, and teacher perceptions of the usefulness of high‐frequency words

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