In this article Paul Nation responds to Thomas Cobb's "Numbers or Numerology? A Response to Nation (2014) and McQuillan (2016)" (EJ1117024). Nation begins by clarifying his own position on vocabulary learning and goes on to highlight points made in Cobb's article with which he is in agreement, while drawing from his 2014 article,…

Based on a theoretical model of instructional quality this study investigates the influence of different dimensions of instructional quality in the school entrance phase on students' language development taking into account child and family background factors as well as structural characteristics of the classroom and teacher's educational beliefs.…

Given the practical significance of vocabulary testing in language teaching and the theoretical foundations of developing a vocabulary test, four well-established vocabulary tests are introduced for diagnostic purpose together with their corresponding validation studies, with a focus on the designed purpose, the selection of the items, the…

This study investigated the amount of vocabulary that Saudi EFL teachers have in Saudi Arabia. The participants included 75 Saudi EFL males' teachers and 121 Saudi EFL females' teachers, who were chosen randomly from various Saudi public schools. Moreover, the study utilized a Vocabulary Levels Test VLT, which was constructed by Webb, Sasao, and…

The article is devoted to the problem of the development of skills connected with the acquisition of foreign lexis (Lexis = all possible words or phrases in a language) on the basis of semantic fields (Semantic field = a lexical set of related items, e.g., colour, red, green, blue). This becomes possible due to grouping well-known and unknown to…

The language learner strategies research field has often tried to identify the good language learner (GLL) by distinguishing more proficient from less proficient learners. However the notion of 'good' may be problematic without taking into account an individual's linguistic knowledge (LK). This article foregrounds LK in relation to strategy use in…

Cross-linguistic lexical similarity in the form of cognates and loanwords has been shown to positively impact second language learning and use, as well as performance on tests of lexical knowledge, even when the learners' languages differ in script. The present study utilizes Japanese cognate frequency, as an indication of cognate knowledge, to…

Morphological analysis and incidental learning are two vocabulary learning strategies that language learners may use in order to acquire the meanings of new words. To date, however, few studies have compared the effectiveness of these two strategies. Hence, the current study was carried out to compare the effect of morphological analysis and…

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students' minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test…

Thomas Cobb's 2007 applied linguistics paper, "Computing the Vocabulary Demands of L2 Reading" dealt with whether reading alone can build an adequate reading lexicon in a second language, or whether some sort of extra vocabulary training will normally be required. In the article, Cobb proposed that in the case of adult academic ESL…

Many primary grade students are not afforded nonfiction-rich opportunities, with fiction comprising the majority of books read aloud in classrooms. With the Common Core Standards recommending that half of the texts made available to students be nonfiction, educators are increasing their use of informational text. The present study explored the…

Objective: There are very few measures of language development in spoken Greek that can be used with young deaf children. This study investigated the use of Cyprus Lexical List (CYLEX), a receptive and expressive vocabulary assessment based on parent report that has recently been adapted to Standard Greek, to measure the vocabulary development of…

4 Corners Vocabulary Charts (FCVCs) are explored as a multipurpose vehicle for processing academic language in a 5th-grade classroom. FCVCs typically display a vocabulary word, an illustration of the word, synonyms associated with the word, a sentence using a given vocabulary word, and a definition of the term in students' words. The use of…

This study moves beyond previous investigations to examine whether an educational intervention combining shared book reading with a vocabulary game increases children's vocabulary knowledge. Four-year-olds (N = 44) were randomly assigned to dyads in either an intervention (shared book reading plus vocabulary review game) or comparison condition…

This study moves beyond previous investigations to examine whether an educational intervention combining shared book reading with a vocabulary game increases children's vocabulary knowledge. Four-year-olds (N = 44) were randomly assigned to dyads in either an intervention (shared book reading plus vocabulary review game) or comparison condition…