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Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 25:1 (2020) ► pp.36–61

How much vocabulary is needed to use a concordance?

| Victoria University of Wellington
| Victoria University of Wellington

Vocabulary load is a predictor of comprehension and a common concern in relation to learner use of concordances; however, vocabulary load figures for whole texts have limited relevance to learner use of concordances. This paper explores the average vocabulary load of the citations (or lines) in a concordance, reflecting how learners use concordances as reading or reference resources. Non-parametric tests are used to compare the vocabulary loads of citations from three authentic written corpora and a corpus of graded readers. The results indicate that citations from authentic corpora have an average vocabulary load of 4,000–5,000 word families, there are reliable differences in vocabulary load between citations from different corpora, and the magnitude of difference between citations from authentic corpora can be equivalent to the magnitude of difference between authentic corpora and graded reader corpora. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results in relation to language learner use of concordances.

Keywords: concordancing, vocabulary load, authentic texts, citations, graded readers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The vocabulary demands of learner use of concordances
    • 2.1Vocabulary and reading
    • 2.2Concordances, reading and vocabulary load
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Corpora
    • 3.2Expanded word lists
    • 3.3Procedure
      • 3.3.1Power analysis
      • 3.3.2Developing the sampling frame
      • 3.3.3Scoring
        • Vocabulary coverage level
        • Mean word frequency
      • 3.3.4Extraction software
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Study one: Three authentic corpora
    • 4.2Study two: Replication
    • 4.3Study three: Authentic corpora compared with a graded corpus
  • 5.Pedagogical implications and discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 16 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.17116.bal
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