Lexical Coverage of the TOEIC Masaya Kanzaki Kanda University of International Studies PanSIG2016, May 22, 1:30-2:00, RM 212 Meio University, Nago, Okinawa

Purpose To determine whether the vocabulary used in the TOEIC is appropriate for learners If a lot of high frequency words are used, that’s good for learners.

Materials 34 sets of ETS-generated TOEIC practice tests (328,172 words) Range program with BNC/COCA lists

ETS TOEIC Practice Tests published in Japan

ETS TOEIC Practice Tests published in Korea

Range program

Word list Tokens % Cumulative plus PMCA 1st 1000 75.67 80.37 2nd 1000 11.21 86.88 91.58 3rd 1000 5.27 92.15 96.85 4th 1000 1.45 93.6 98.3 5th 1000 0.4 94 98.7 Proper nouns 3.61 Marginal words 0.14 Compounds 0.69 Abbreviations 0.26 PMCA total 4.7

Result (and another question) The first 3000 words plus PMCA comprise 96.85% of the words used in the ETS TOEIC practice tests. Do students have to learn all the 3000 words in order to do well on the TOEIC?

No, they don’t. 1919 words appear 10 times or more in the TOEIC corpus (including compounds but excluding proper nouns, marginal words and abbreviations). The 1919 words cover 93.38% of the corpus and those 1919 plus proper nouns, marginal words and abbreviations cover 97.39%.

TOEIC Word List: Frequency bands # of words 1st 1000 796 6th 1000 27 2nd 1000 482 7th 1000 10 3rd 1000 382 8th 1000 9 4th 1000 114 9th 1000 1 5th 1000 50 Compounds 48

Unit of counting ACCESS ACCESSED ACCESSES ACCESSING ACCESSIBLE INACCESSIBLE ACCESSIBILITY INACCESSIBILITY

Q&A Thank you. Acknowledgement This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25370727.