1. 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

2. 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.

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

4. ETS TOEIC Practice Tests published in Japan

5. ETS TOEIC Practice Tests published in Korea

6. Range program

8. 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

10. 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?

11. 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%.

12. 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

14. Unit of counting
ACCESS ACCESSED ACCESSES ACCESSING ACCESSIBLE INACCESSIBLE ACCESSIBILITY INACCESSIBILITY

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