摘要
本文旨在探讨产出性词汇量与词汇运用对写作质量的影响,并找出影响写作质量的词汇因素。被试为两个自然班的57名大学二年级学生。产出性词汇量测试采用Paul Nation(1990)的10,000词汇水平测试,词汇运用采用限时作文来进行分析。分析结果发现,词汇量对写作质量没有直接影响,但是通过影响文本长度采间接影响写作质量。产出性词汇量对词汇丰富性有一定影响,如词汇量大的学习者往往使用较少的第一类词和更多的复杂词。影响写作质量的词汇因素有文本长度,T—unit长度和第一类词的使用量。
Receptive vocabulary size is considered to be closely related to EFL writing quality, but it is less known whether productive vocabulary size contributes to writing quality. It is speculated that large vocabulary size leads to long composition; however, there's no data to verify the hypothesis. To date few studies have related vocabulary size to lexical richness at the same proficiency level. Laufer and Nation (1995) have proposed a new measure of lexical richness-the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP). It categorizes the vocabulary used in the discourse into frequent, less frequent and infrequent words. The higher the percentage count of infrequent words, the larger the subject' s productive vocabulary is estimated to be. The entire calculation is done by a computer program. The VocabProfile package can find the first 1, 000 most frequent words (K1 words), the second 1, 000 most frequent words (K2 words), the academic vocabulary (AWL) and the words not in any of the above lists (Off-list words). But LFP has fatal disadvantages. Firstly, it can't discriminate between lexical repetition and lexical types. Secondly, the VocabProfile package counts misspelled words as off-list words, which mean the most sophisticated words.
The paper is written in an attempt to explore the influence of productive vocabulary size and vocabulary use on writing quality and to find out the contributing lexical factors to writing quality. Vocabulary use includes text length and lexical richness. Lexical richness consists of T-unit length, Kl and SOP word percentage. Although productive vocabulary size is considered to affect writing ability, yet many learners in practical contexts are found to score low even if they have large vocabulary size. In addition, much research has relied on measures of receptive vocabulary since it has been difficult to measure productive vocabulary size efficiently. Therefore the question has to be put forward again as to the relationship between vocabulary size and writing quality. The other questions are also put forward as to a) whether productive vocabulary size influences lexical richness, b) whether large productive vocabulary size leads to long compositions, and c) what are the contributing lexical factors to writing score.
The 57 subjects are second-year college students in two natural classes. All of them have learned English for eight years and have practiced English writing for about three years. Besides, they are at the same proficiency level. Paul Nation' s (1990) 10, 000 word level test is used to measure the subjects' productive vocabulary size, and timed composition employed to analyze their vocabulary use. What's more important, this study has improved Laufer and Nation's (1995) Lexical Frequency Profile and the improved VocabProfile package is used to analyze the subjects' lexical richness in their writing. The above disadvantages are avoided because of the improvement. The results show that vocabulary size has no immediate effect on writing score, but it affects writing score indirectly by influencing text length. Large vocabulary size leads to increased text length and hence increased writing quality. And vocabulary size also has an effect on the use of Kl and SOP words in that the learners who have a large vocabulary tend to use relatively more sophisticated words and less Kl words. Good compositions bear such features as long text, long T-unit and more Kl words.
出处
《现代外语》
CSSCI
北大核心
2003年第2期180-187,共8页
Modern Foreign Languages
关键词
产出性词汇量
写作质量
文本长度
词汇丰富性
productive vocabulary size,writing quality,text length,lexical richness
