Q_Lex: A test of word recognition for Japanese learners: practical assessment, and lexicon structure David Coulson A presentation at the EuroSLA conference. Aix-en-Provence, France, 2015

Testing learners for word-recognition skill Establish a core of automatically accessible lexical items (Hulstijn, 2001) No widely accepted test of vocabulary fluency (Daller et al 2007). How do vocabulary size and lexical access speed co-vary?

Principles Lexical space Test most frequent words Lambert: "Facility in word-detection" Meara "...accessibility is a general feature that distinguishes between native speakers and L2 speakers of a language." Use native speaker baseline Robust test design

Lexical space

Principles Lexical space Test most frequent words Lambert: "Facility in word-detection" Meara "...accessibility is a general feature that distinguishes between native speakers and L2 speakers of a language." Use native speaker baseline Robust test design

Approaches to Word detection Word recognition tests should be robust, and simple DANSONODEND (Lambert, 1959) weolsulusimpletggiha (Meara, 1986) wgfbackvcb (Adams, 1990) thatboywentlast vs whatbuywantland (Adams, 1990) gotablebrother (Jacobson, 1995)

Practical Word Recognition tests: prior research E.g. Harrington (2006) found that as frequency of words decreased reaction times lengthen. Co-efficient of variation; higher ability individuals tended to have more consistent response times There are doubts about accuracy of the use of the Yes/No format for judging reaction times.

Q_Lex Word recognition based on a word-search format Meara developed the format in the 1980s following work by Lambert

Q_Lex interface zqpwnightuemp

Q_Lex items Hide target words in letter strings. This slows down recognition so it can be measured by PC zqpwnightuemp zero-order approximation (easier)

Q_Lex items Hide target words in letter strings. This slows down recognition so it can be measured by PC zqpwnightuemp eslenightrabygr zero-order approximation first-order approximation (a little more difficult)

Use of the easiest “Zero-OA” masks Five-letter words were selected These are most likely to be a single syllable in length These items were placed in shorter 13-letter strings

Development of the format 66 words were selected (mean rank order: 833 in the JACET word list.) 20 NSs took the test; data was used to calculate norm values Mean NS reaction time: 925msecs SD female first-year university students took the test. Their mean score was 36.0/66 (54.5%). The test showed good reliability by the Kr-21 method (0.92)

Rasch Analysis and the Creation of Equivalent Forms of Q_Lex The range of infit meansquare was from 0.73 to items were split into two 30-item sets. Value of infit meansquare was Shuffling of items resulted in Form A ( infit mnsq 1.00 ). and Form B ( infit mnsq 0.99 ) The mean number of hits per item (mean score of 106 subjects) in both Forms was 55.8

Method 42 first-year university students took part (34 female, 8 male). Three proficiency levels: 15 ‘advanced’; 14 ‘intermediate’; 13 ‘basic’ Intensive online vocabulary study (with the adaptive “Word Engine”) Time span: 9 months All students’ vocabulary size was measured pre-/post- with “X_Lex” A control group of students did not take the vocabulary course

Research questions 1) How does the word-recognition of learners change over time? 2) How does word recognition develop in response vocabulary learning? 3) How consistent are learners over time in responding to the same items?

Results The average gain in number of words learned was 1109 (SD = 778). Consistently answered items were answered faster. The control group showed no gain in Q_Lex scores. The Q_Lex reflects changes in groups, based on proficiency and learning-activity differences.

Results Q_lex reflects changes in lexical accessibility, linked weakly to proficiency. A weak correlation was seen between gains in vocabulary size and gains in Q_Lex scores (r=0.25). The Advanced group showed a negative correlation (-0.28). Students who learned more frequent vocabulary (Basic and Intermediate groups) extended their Q_Lex scores

Implication 1 Qualified support for the idea vocabulary size increase leads to better accessibility In particular, this result supports the work of Miralpeix and Meara (2014); i.e. there is no consistent relationship between vocabulary size (growth) and accessibility. This supports the idea that accessibility is an independent dimension.

Implication 2 Some words in memory are easier to access This facet of knowledge may not vary much over time. These reliably recognized items had significantly faster response times This is not due to the facility of items, but reflects a greater sensitivity to certain words in learners.

References Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coulson, D. (2014). The development of word reading skill in secondary schools in East Asia. pp In R. Al Marooqi (Ed.) Focusing on EFL Reading: Theory and Practice. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Daller, H., Milton, J. & Treffers-Daller, J. (2007) Modelling and Assessing Vocabulary Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrington, M. (2006). The lexical decision task as a measure of L2 lexical proficiency. EUROSLA Yearbook 1(2006), Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hulstijn, J. H. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp ). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobson, C. (1995). Word Recognition Index (WRI) as a quick screening marker of dyslexia. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 16, 3, Lambert, W.E. & Havelka, J. & Gardner. R.C. (1959). Linguistic Manifestations of Bilingualism. The American Journal of Psychology, Meara, P.M. (1986). The Dígame Project. In Cook, V.J., (Ed.), Experimental approaches to second language learning Pergamon Institute of English Meara, P.M. (2002). The rediscovery of vocabulary. Second Language Research. 18,4, Miralpeix, I., & Meara, P. M. (2014). Knowledge of the written word. In J. Milton & T. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Dimensions of vocabulary knowledge (pp ). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.