Learning Vocabulary in Another Language:
A Test of Teachers’ Knowledge
1
How many word families does an average adult native speaker of English
know?
A
B
C
D
E
150,000
100,000
50,000
20,000
don’t know
2
If learners know the most frequent 2000 words of English, what percentage of
running words in an academic text will be known to them?
A
B
C
D
E
60%
80%
90%
98%
don’t know
3
What is the most important factor in formal measures of readability?
A
B
C
D
E
background knowledge
vocabulary knowledge
reading skill in L1
grammatical knowledge
don’t know
4
The most effective way of beginning to learn the meaning of a word is by
A
B
C
D
E
the use of a picture
translation into the first language
a dictionary definition
seeing a word in context
don’t know
5
How many words does an average learner of English as a foreign language know
after five or six years of four 50 minute English classes per week?
A
B
C
D
E
1,000
3,000
5,000
10,000
don’t know
1
6
Initially opposites like hot and cold should be learned
A
B
C
D
E
at the same time
in quick succession
as part of a bigger lexical set
at widely separated times
don’t know
7
Complex words like inventiveness and uncontrollably are usually stored in the
brain as
A
B
C
D
E
stems and affixes that are combined when needed
both as whole units and word parts
complete analyzed words
complete unanalyzed words
don’t know
8
Learners most often have problems in guessing the meaning of a word in helpful
contexts because they
A
B
C
D
E
give too much attention to the form of the word
do not use their background knowledge of the topic
do not draw on clues from neighboring sentences or paragraphs
do not give attention to the immediate context of the word
don’t know
9
In order to have a good chance of guessing the meaning of an unknown word
from context clues, what percentage of the running words in the text does the
learner need to know?
A
B
C
D
E
78%
80%
90%
98%
don’t know
10
When learners know the most common 2000 words of English, the words that
they have most difficulty with in academic texts in their specialist area are
A
B
C
D
E
general purpose academic words like assume, concept, diverse
function words like because, although, hence
proper nouns like Darwin, Menlo Park, Edgebaston
technical words like anode, impedance, galvonometer
don’t know
2
11
The ‘lexical bar’ is
A
B
C
D
E
the Graeco-Latin words of English
the high frequency words of English
the function words of English
the discourse markers of English
don’t know
12
Teachers should deal with low frequency words by
A
B
C
D
E
breaking them into prefixes, stems and suffixes
letting learners guess them from context
teaching the learners strategies to deal with them
providing varied and repeated opportunities to give attention to those words
don’t know
13
Which of these most helps vocabulary learning?
A
B
C
D
E
meeting or using the word in a new way
having its meaning explained
meeting the word in context
searching for the word in a dictionary
don’t know
14
Definitions of unknown words are most effective if
A
B
C
D
E
they are short
they contain plenty of useful detail
they are written as complete sentences
they are accompanied by grammatical information
don’t know
15
Most learning of vocabulary used in oral communication tasks involves words
A
B
C
D
E
whose meanings are negotiated in the task
whose meanings are not negotiated in the task
which are in the written input to the task
which are not in the written input to the task
don’t know
16
A ‘book flood’ involves
A
B
C
D
E
doing a lot of intensive reading in class
setting a lot of intensive reading outside class
replacing a large part of the class work with extensive reading
encouraging extensive reading outside class time
don’t know
3
17
The Lexical Frequency Profile’ is a way of
A
B
C
D
E
measuring productive vocabulary use
deciding what will be classified as high frequency words
comparing the frequency of selected words
diagrammatically representing vocabulary growth
don’t know
18
Quickly providing meanings for unknown words while listening or reading
A
B
C
D
E
has little effect on comprehension of the text
upsets comprehension of the text
greatly increases the amount of vocabulary learned
results in little vocabulary learning
don’t know
19
About what percentage of the low frequency words of English comes from
French, Latin or Greek?
A
B
C
D
E
20%
40%
60%
80%
don’t know
20
How many closely related members does a typical English word family have?
A
B
C
D
E
3
5
7
9
don’t know
21
During writing activities, learners use dictionaries most often to
A
B
C
D
E
check spelling
look up the meaning of a word
see if a word exists
find out about the grammar of the word
don’t know
4
22
‘Retrieval’ involves
A
B
C
D
E
receptive learning
productive learning
recalling an item
recognizing that two given items go together
don’t know
23
The sentence ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ consists of ten
A
B
C
D
E
tokens
types
lemmas
word families
don’t know
24
A ‘lemma’ is a base word and
A
B
C
D
E
all its derived forms
all its inflected forms
all its related forms
all its inflected forms which are the same part of speech
don’t know
25
An ‘Academic vocabulary’ is made up of words that
A
B
C
D
E
are only used in academic texts
are only used in a specialised field
are found in a wide range of academic texts
are found in a wide range of academic and non-academic texts
don’t know
26
How many chunks of information can be held in short-term memory at any one
time?
A
B
C
D
E
one
about three
about seven
about ten
don’t know
5
27
The General Service List of English Words is a list of
A
B
C
D
E
30,000 words and their frequencies
the commonest collocations
2,000 high frequency words
words that can be used to define other words
don’t know
28
To test learners’ productive knowledge of vocabulary we must get learners to
A
B
C
D
E
produce words in spoken or written sentences
produce spoken or written forms from a meaning cue
produce or recognize spoken or written word forms from a meaning cue
produce a first language translation of words
don’t know
29
Vocabulary tests using different test formats tend to correlate with each other
with a correlation around
A
B
C
D
E
0.3
0.5
0.7
0.9
don’t know
30
Coxhead’s Academic Word List contains
A
B
C
D
E
492 word families
570 word families
836 word families
1,000 word families
don’t know
6
Answers
1D, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6D, 7A, 8A, 9D, 10A, 11A, 12C, 13D, 14A, 15B, 16C, 17A, 18C,
19C, 20C, 21B, 22C, 23A, 24D, 25C, 26C, 27C, 28C, 29C, 30B
7