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The development of a Difficulty-Based Word List for Japanese EFL learners.

Research Project

Project/Area Number 18K12479
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists

Allocation TypeMulti-year Fund
Review Section Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
Research InstitutionOsaka Jogakuin College

Principal Investigator

McLean Stuart  大阪女学院大学, 国際・英語学部, 専任講師 (10624794)

Project Period (FY) 2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
Project Status Completed (Fiscal Year 2019)
Budget Amount *help
¥3,770,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥870,000)
Fiscal Year 2019: ¥260,000 (Direct Cost: ¥200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥60,000)
Fiscal Year 2018: ¥3,510,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥810,000)
Keywords単語 / vocabulary / testing / word list
Outline of Final Research Achievements

Data was collected from 862 Japanese university students. The students completed form-recall (Japanese to English translation) as part of their vocabulary program. Over 28 weeks on average students completed 2817 form recall items resulting in difficulty estimates of the New General Service List. The correlation between the difficulty of the words and rank in the New General Service List (NGSL) was .45. The correlation between the difficulty of the words and rank in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) was .38. The second stage was to produce a free online vocabulary levels test. The goal of this stage was to use the test and pilot the test format and testing platform with 500 words from the first 5000 lemmas of a SubTlex word list. The third stage is to alter the free online vocabulary levels test so it randomly selects words from the target 5000 lemmas. This means with time stable difficulty estimates for the target 5000 lemmas are yielded.

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本プロジェクトのデータ収集は3段階で行われた。まず、どの語彙を学習する必要があるかを確認するために日本人大学生862名に28週間、週に最低30項目のフォームリコール(日英翻訳)を完了させ、NGSLの難易度推定を行った結果、語彙難易度とNGSLのランクとの相関関係は.45、COCAでは.38であった。次に、無料オンライン語彙テストを作成した。SubTlex語彙リストの最初の5千レマから五百語を使用し、テスト形式とテストプラットフォームの試験的な使用を目的とした。最後に、無料オンライン語彙レベルテストに語彙をランダムに選ぶよう変更を加えて、時間の経過とともに5千レマの難易度が得られるようになった。

Report

(3 results)
  • 2019 Annual Research Report   Final Research Report ( PDF )
  • 2018 Research-status Report
  • Research Products

    (10 results)

All 2020 2019 2018

All Journal Article (5 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 1 results,  Peer Reviewed: 5 results,  Open Access: 2 results) Presentation (5 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 3 results)

  • [Journal Article] Effects of Distributed Retrieval Practice Over a Semester: Cumulative Tests as a Way to Facilitate Second Language Vocabulary Learning2020

    • Author(s)
      Nakata, T., Tada, T., McLean. S., & Kim, Y.
    • Journal Title

      TESOL Quarterly

      Volume: 0nlinefirst Issue: 1 Pages: 248-270

    • DOI

      10.1002/tesq.596

    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Open Access
  • [Journal Article] Predicting L2 reading proficiency with modalities of vocabulary knowledge A bootstrapping approach.2020

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S., Stewart, J, & Batty, A.
    • Journal Title

      Language Testing

      Volume: 0nlinefirst Issue: 3 Pages: 389-411

    • DOI

      10.1177/0265532219898380

    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Int'l Joint Research
  • [Journal Article] LIMITATIONS OF SIZE AND LEVELS TESTS OF WRITTEN RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE2020

    • Author(s)
      Stoeckel, T., McLean, S. ,& Nation, P.
    • Journal Title

      Studies in Second Language Acquisition

      Volume: 0nlinefirst

    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed
  • [Journal Article] The relationship of four variants of the Vocabulary Size Test to a criterion measure of meaning recall vocabulary knowledge2019

    • Author(s)
      Stoeckel, T., Stewart, J., McLean, S., Ishii, T., Kramer, B., & Matsumoto, Y.
    • Journal Title

      System

      Volume: 87 Pages: 1-14

    • DOI

      10.1016/j.system.2019.102161

    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Peer Reviewed
  • [Journal Article] Increasing reading self-efficacy and reading amount in EFL learners with word-targets2018

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S., Poulshock, J.
    • Journal Title

      Reading in a Foreign Language

      Volume: 30 Pages: 76-91

    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Open Access
  • [Presentation] Predicting L2 reading proficiency with modalities of vocabulary knowledge A bootstrapping approach.2020

    • Author(s)
      McLean. S.
    • Organizer
      Thai TESOL
    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Online self-marking typing, speaking, listening or reading vocabulary levels tests2019

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S.
    • Organizer
      KOTESOL
    • Related Report
      2019 Annual Research Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of extensive reading at developing Japanese university students' reading rates2019

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S., & Rouault, G.
    • Organizer
      American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL)-(Chicago, America)
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
    • Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] Correlations of modalities of vocabulary knowledge to L2 Reading Proficiency: A bootstrapping approach.2019

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S.
    • Organizer
      14th Annual Cam TESOL Conference on English Language Teaching- (Phnompenh,Cambodia)
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report
  • [Presentation] Evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of extensive reading at developing Japanese university students' reading rates.2018

    • Author(s)
      McLean, S.
    • Organizer
      KOTESOL-(Seoul, Korea)
    • Related Report
      2018 Research-status Report

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Published: 2018-04-23   Modified: 2021-02-19  

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