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ERIC Number: EJ975686
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-7902
EISSN: N/A
The Relationship of Lexical Richness to the Quality of ESL Learners' Oral Narratives
Lu, Xiaofei
Modern Language Journal, v96 n2 p190-208 Sum 2012
This study was an examination of the relationship of lexical richness to the quality of English as a second language (ESL) learners' oral narratives. A computational system was designed to automate the measurement of 3 dimensions of lexical richness, that is, lexical density, sophistication, and variation, using 25 different metrics proposed in the language acquisition literature. This system was used to analyze large-scale data from the Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners (Wen, Wang, & Liang, 2005) together with the vocd utility of the Computerized Language Analysis programs (MacWhinney, 2000), which offers an additional measure of lexical variation, the D measure (Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Duran, 2004; McKee, Malvern, & Richards, 2000). This comprehensive analysis allowed us to identify measures that correlate strongly with the raters' judgments of the quality of ESL learners' oral narratives, as well as to understand the relationships among these measures. This research provides ESL teachers and researchers with a robust tool for assessing the lexical richness of ESL language samples and insights into how lexical richness measures may be effectively used as indices of the quality of ESL learners' speaking task performance. (Contains 7 notes, 1 figure and 16 tables.)
Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A