A vocabulary-size test of controlled productive ab

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http://ltj.sagepub.com/content/16/1/33The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/026553229901600103 1999 16: 33Language Testing Batia Laufer and Paul Nation A vocabulary-size test of controlled productive ability Published by:

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Batia Laufer English Department,University of Haifa

Paul Nation English Language Institute,Victoria University

of Wellington

It is important in the design of the vocabulary component of a teaching program that teachers are able to discover the state of their learners’vocabulary knowledge.

It is also important that researchers can draw on a variety of vocabulary measures to investigate the nature of vocabulary growth.This study focuses on a controlled production measure of vocabulary consisting of items fromfive frequency levels, and using a completion item type like the following.

The garden was full of fraflowers.

The controlled-production vocabulary-levels test was found to be reliable,valid (in that the levels distinguished between different proficiency groups)and practi-cal.There was a satisfactory degree of equivalence between two equivalent forms of the test.

I Vocabulary testing

Vocabulary knowledge is considered by bothfirst-language and second-language researchers to be of great significance in language competence(Grabe,1991;Frederiksen,1982)and vocabulary testing is now receiving the attention it deserves,with studies of the construct validity of some vocabulary tests(Chapelle,1994;Perkins and Lin-ville,1987),examination of the effectiveness of particular item types (Henning,1991;Laufer and Nation,1995),and a comprehensive examination of thefield of vocabulary testing in preparation(Read, forthcoming).The present study attempts to contribute to this knowl-edge.

This increased interest can be interpreted to mean that there is con-siderable value in gaining knowledge about specific parts of language learners’proficiency because it can be used effectively for diagnostic,

Address for correspondence:Paul Nation,English Language Institute,Victoria University of Wellington,PO Box600,Wellington,New Zealand;e-mail:Paul.NationȰvuw.ac.nz

Language Testing199916(1)33–510265-5322(99)LT160OA©1999Arnold34Vocabulary-size test

placement and curriculum-design purposes.For example,the Vocabu-lary Levels Test(Nation,1983;1990)has proved to be useful in helping teachers to determine the kind of attention they should be giving to vocabulary for particular groups of learners.This is an important decision in terms of the cost-effectiveness of the use of class time,because high-frequency vocabulary development requires a different program from low-frequency vocabulary development. Following is a sample of three items tested by the Vocabulary Levels Test.The learners have to match three of the six words on the left with the meanings given on the right.

1business

2clock6part of a house

3horse3animal with four legs

4pencil4something used for writing

5shoe

6wall

Similarly,Meara’s Eurocentres Vocabulary Size Test(Meara and Buxton,1987)has been very useful as a quickly administered place-ment test.Vocabulary tests are useful diagnostic and placement tests largely because they tap very important‘enabling’knowledge and they test a large number of items at one time,allowing reliable decision-making.

An importantfinding arising from the research on vocabulary-item types is that different item types appear to be tapping different aspects and degrees of vocabulary knowledge(Paul et al.,1990).It has long been recognised that there are many dimensions to‘knowing a word’(Richards,1976;Nation,1990),and many degrees of knowledge.The receptive/productive distinction is the best known of these.Other aspects of vocabulary knowledge include,for example,collocations, associations,use in context and related meanings.In order to gain a rounded picture of a learner’s vocabulary knowledge,it is necessary to have a range of vocabulary measures to draw on.

A variety of vocabulary measures is useful diagnostically to see if particular aspects of vocabulary knowledge are being neglected in a course.For example,learners who gain a high score in a Vocabulary Levels Test,but do not use the full richness of their vocabulary in writing,may need encouragement and well designed tasks to help them draw more readily on what they know.

There is also considerable value in having a range of well-thought-out vocabulary measures to draw on in research on vocabulary learn-ing.Joe(1994),for example,in her study of vocabulary learning fromBatia Laufer and Paul Nation35 retelling tasks,used several measures of the same vocabulary and was thus able to measure degrees of strength of knowledge of the words in the study and relate this to the conditions under which they were learned.

II Vocabulary frequency levels

The test format employed in this study was used previously in an examination of lexical richness in writing(Laufer and Nation,1995). The main idea behind the Vocabulary Levels Test(Nation,1983; 1990)is that it is useful to view the vocabulary of English(and indeed any language)as consisting of a series of levels based on frequency of occurrence.For example,these levels could consist of groups of 1000words made up of the most frequent1000words of the langu-age,the next most frequent1000words of the language and so on. There are several compelling reasons why it is useful to view vocabu-lary in this way.

First,even a glance at the relative frequency of use of different words shows that there are striking differences between them.The word the accounts for7%of the running words in written texts.The most frequent10words account for around25%of the running words in spoken and written use.The most frequent1000words account for around75%of the running words in formal written texts and around84%of informal spoken use.By contrast,the tenth1000most frequent words account for much less than1%of the running words in a text.

Second,there is a very large number of words in English(Goulden et al.,1990)and it is far beyond the goals of any language course to give attention to anything but a very small proportion of these words. It is,thus,necessary to choose carefully what words to focus on. For these reasons a distinction is made between the high frequency words of the language,as represented by the most frequent2000 words(Nation and Hwang,1995),and the large number of low fre-quency words of the language.This distinction is essentially a cost–benefit distinction.The cost is the time and effort to teach and learn the words.The benefit is the number of opportunities to use the words,as represented by the frequency of the words.All things being equal,words should be learned roughly in order of their frequency of occurrence,with high frequency words being learnedfirst.To avoid the ludicrous results of a strict interpretation of this guideline, such as,for example,learning the before hello,words are grouped into frequency bands,such as thefirst1000,second1000and so on.

A study of frequencyfigures shows that there is a very rapid drop in the frequency of such bands.Table1is based on the lemmatised36Vocabulary-size test

Table1Frequency band and percentage of text coverage

Frequency level Cumulative coverage Coverage

(%)(%)

1st100072.072.0

2nd100079.77.7

3rd100084.0 4.3

4th100086.8 2.8

5th100088.7 1.9

6th1000.9 1.2

figures for the Brown corpus(Francis and Kuc˘era,1982)which con-tains a variety of text types and registers.It presents an example of the decreasing coverage by successive word frequency bands. From a teaching point of view,in courses not focused on well defined areas of use,only the words in the most frequent2000words of English(the high frequency words)deserve individual attention. Beyond that level,that is the words in the third,fourth,fifth1000 levels and onwards,teaching attention should be directed more towards strategies for learning and coping with these words,such as guessing from context,memorisation techniques and procedures,and the learning of word parts.Learners should continue to expand their vocabulary,but teachers should not necessarily continue to teach particular words directly.The reason for this distinction between high-and low-frequency words is primarily one of cost–benefit.The time spent on teaching any one low-frequency word is not justified by the small amount of benefit that learners get from knowing it,that is the number of opportunities to meet or use the word.The dividing line between high-and low-frequency words can be drawn using sev-eral criteria:frequency,coverage of the text,size of the high fre-quency group,overlap between various word counts,and the starting point of specialized vocabularies(Nation and Hwang,1995).The cri-teria tend to agree in indicating that the2000-word level is the most suitable place to make this arbitrary distinction.

This important distinction between high-and low-frequency words then makes it necessary for teachers to know what stage their learners are at in their vocabulary development.This was the motivation behind the construction of the original Vocabulary Levels Test,and now its productive version.

III A test of controlled productive ability

Productive vocabulary ability is not a yes/no phenomenon,but implies degrees of knowledge.For example,a learner may be ableBatia Laufer and Paul Nation37 to provide a sentence with an infrequent word when required to do so by the teacher,but be reluctant to use it when left to his own devices,as in a composition writing task and choose to use a simpler, more frequent word of a similar meaning.Such reluctance is often a result of uncertainty about the word’s usage.Put differently,lack of confidence is a reflection of imperfect knowledge.We refer to the ability to use a word at one’s free will as free productive ability. This type of knowledge is measured by the Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer and Nation,1995).We use the term‘controlled productive ability’for the ability to use a word when compelled to do so by a teacher or researcher,whether in an unconstrained context such as a sentence-writing task,or in a constrained context such as afill-in task where a sentence context is provided and the missing target word has to be supplied.It is the latter format,with modifications described below,that we used for the present test.

For each item,a meaningful sentence context is presented and the first letters of the target item are provided.Thefirst letters prevent the test-takers fromfilling in another word which would be semantically appropriate in the given context but which comes from a different frequency level.Here is an example eliciting the word‘episodes’.

The book covers a series of isolated epis from history. The test format bears some resemblance to the C-test(Klein-Braley and Raatz,1984;Klein-Braley,1985),although for vocabulary-sam-pling purposes in this study it is not used in a paragraph but a sen-tence,and the cues are not always half a word.The number of letters for each word was decided on by the elimination of possible alterna-tives to the tested word.The C-test uses thefirst half of a word with the smaller number of letters being provided if the word has an odd number of letters(e.g.,thefirst two letters are provided if the word containsfive letters).Because our test was a test of productive vocabulary ability,it was thought better to provide the minimal num-ber of letters that would disambiguate the cue.If two letters could start two possible words in the given sentence,an additional letter was added to eliminate this possibility.The size of the underlined space at the end of the incomplete word is no indication of the number of letters needed to complete it.

The overall structure of the test is modelled on the Vocabulary Levels Test(Nation,1983;1990).The test samples18items at each of the2000,3000,5000,University Word List(UWL),and10000 word levels.Test Version A uses the items from the original Levels Test.Three parallel test versions were devised using the items from the three parallel versions of the Levels Test,which were made by Norbert Schmitt.

Two studies were conducted,one to check the reliability and val-idity of one version of the test,and one to check the equivalence of four parallel forms of the test

IV Study1:Validation of the test

1Research question and hypothesis

One kind of evidence for the validity of the test is to see if it distingu-ishes among different levels of language proficiency since vocabulary size forms a part of language proficiency.Learners at a higher level of language knowledge know more words.Therefore,our research question was whether there would be a significant difference among groups at several language-proficiency levels,in the total score on the test,and in the scores at each vocabulary frequency level:2000, 3000,5000,UWL,10000.The question was researched with Test Version A(published in Laufer and Nation,1995).The receptive version of this test,the Vocabulary Levels Test,shows a substantial degree of implicational scaling from one frequency level to the next (Read,1988).

2Subjects

The subjects were four groups of foreign learners at different pro-ficiency levels of English as a foreign language:high school10th graders(n=24),11th graders(n=23),12th graders(n=18)and 1st year university students in the English department(n=14).The 10th graders had studied English for5years(4–5hours a week),the 11th graders–6years,12th graders–7years.Since English was studied as a foreign,not second,language and class work was the main source of input,the class grade was a fair indication of langu-age proficiency.

3Procedure

First,three native speakers were asked to retrieve the tested items. One of the researchers was sitting with them.Whenever someone had a difficulty with the retrieval,the sentence context was modified in thefirst instance.If that did not help,an additional letter for the target item was provided.The modified versions of the tests were given to seven additional native speakers.This time all the items could be retrieved by six or more of the seven informants.

The controlled productive ability test was given to the four groups. The grading was in terms of correct/incorrect for each item.MinorTable2Reliabilities for each level of test version A

Level Reliability

2000level.77

3000level.81

UWL.84

5000level.84

10000level.90

spelling mistakes were not marked as incorrect,and grammatical mis-takes were also ignored.Each learner was given6scores:a score for the number of correct items at each of the2000,3000,UWL,5000, and10000levels and for the total score of correctly retrieved items.

4Analysis and results

The entire test version A for all subjects had an internal consistency of.86using the Kuder–Richardson formula KR21.Table2contains the reliabilities for thefive levels in Test Version A.Sets of ANOVAs with Duncan post-hoc tests were performed on each test level and the total test scores.

By looking across each row in Table3,we can see how the scores on the test change as general proficiency increases.For example,the total score on allfive levels of the test grows from21.7out of90for the10th grade students,to33.4out of90for the11th grade students,

Table3Mean scores and F-tests for four proficiency level groups on thefive levels and the total score of the original productive levels test

10th11th12th University F-test

grade grade grade(n=14)

(n=24)(n=23)(n=18)

2000level11.815.016.217.017.9

p=.0001 3000level 6.39.310.814.921.2

p=.0001 UWL level 2.6 5.37.412.634.6

p=.0001 5000level 1.0 3.9 4.77.412.6

p=.0001 10000level0.00.00.9 3.813.6

p=.0001 Total21.733.440.155.832.6

p=.0001to40.1for the12th grade students,and to55.8for the university students.This increase is present not only in the totals for each pro-ficiency level but also for each level of the test for each group.For example,at the2000-word level,the10th graders’score is11.8,the 11th graders’15,the12th graders’16.2and the university stu-dents’17.

Similarly there is a decrease in score for each group at each of the levels of the test.For example,at the2000level the10th graders score11.8,at the3000level6.3,at the UWL level2.6,at the5000 level1.0and at the10000level0.0.The patterning is remarkably consistent in both directions.

As the F-test results in Table3indicate,the differences between the four groups of learners for the total scores and scores at individual frequency levels were significant.To check specifically which groups differed from one another,Duncan post-hoc tests were carried out. The Duncan’s groupings show that on the total score,except for the 11th and the12th grades,the groups are significantly different from one another.With regard to the11th and the12th grades,even though the difference in vocabulary size is not significant,there is neverthe-less progress from a total score of33.4to40.1.The lack of statistical significance between these two groups may be explained by the spe-cific educational conditions of the12th grade.A lot of teaching time is spent on preparation for the matriculation exam,i.e.,revision of material rather than new material.It is also possible that,with larger numbers of subjects in these two groups,statistical significance would be reached in spite of the small difference in mean scores.The test as a whole distinguishes among most of the proficiency groups.

At the10000-word level,only the university students’score is sig-nificantly different from the others.This is not surprising as the10th and11th graders did not score at all at this level which represents low-frequency vocabulary beyond their knowledge,and the12th gra-ders’score was very low.At the5000and3000levels as with the total scores,the11th and12th graders are not significantly different from each other.These two groups are significantly different at these levels from the10th graders and university students.

At the2000word level,there is no significant difference between the university students and the12th graders.Both groups have scores that show mastery of the words at this high-frequency level.The11th graders are not significantly different from the12th graders but are significantly different from the university students.The11th graders are approaching mastery of the high frequency words.The10th grad-ers have significantly different scores from the other three groups with mastery of about two-thirds(11.8out of18)of the2nd1000most frequent words.The most interesting subtest is the university wordlist which discriminates among all the four proficiency levels.Appar-ently,there is a gradual and significant increase throughout the high school and the university in the knowledge of academic words. These results clearly show the gradual mastery of the successive frequency levels of the test as proficiency increases,indicating that it is a valid measure of vocabulary growth.

5Practicality

The Productive Vocabulary Levels Test is a very practical instrument. It is easy to administer and can be completed in a short time.It is easy to mark as there is only one correct word for each item and each answer is marked as correct or incorrect.A whole test can befitted on to three pages and although the test sheets are not reusable,it is economical to duplicate.It could be computerised but some allowance would need to be made for scoring minor misspellings.

The test is easy to interpret.Each level represents1000words, except the UWL level which represents a list of836words.A lear-ner’s percentage score on a level is a very rough indication of the number of words known at that level(for example,9out of18equals 50%;and this would roughly equal500out of1000words).Deciding whether a learner has satisfactory mastery of a level is a matter of judgement and depends what level is being considered,but is prob-ably around15or16out of18(85%or90%)for the2000-word level,indicating that less than150words at that level are not readily available for productive use.

V Study2:The equivalence of four parallel versions

In addition to the original test(Version A),three additional test ver-sions were made up,each version using different items from the same frequency levels.The existence of parallel test versions can be useful in projects where we would like to measure vocabulary growth in test/retest situations to eliminate the memory effect of the items.Hav-ing produced the additional versions,it was necessary to check whether they would correlate highly with one another when adminis-tered to the same learners.

1Subjects and procedure

Four groups of learners were selected at different proficiency levels for the four test levels:2000,3000,5000,UWL.That is,one group of learners sat four versions of the2000-word level,another group sat four versions of the3000-word level and so on.We tried not tohave a situation where the selected test would be too easy or too difficult for a particular group,i.e.,we avoided results with almost all correct or incorrect answers.If this had been the case,then the correlations among the scores of parallel versions would certainly have been high,but not revealing.All they would have revealed is either complete knowledge,or total ignorance of the words at the tested level.The10000-word level was not tested simply because, among our foreign learners,we do not have learners with a good enough knowledge of the words at that level.The subjects in this study were different from the subjects in Study1.In Study1,each subject took the entire test consisting offive frequency levels,with 18items at each level.In Study2,each subject took four versions of only one of the frequency levels.

Pearson correlations between the four test versions were calculated for each of the four tested vocabulary-frequency levels.

2Results and discussion

Table4contains the reliabilities(KR21)for each of the levels. Because different groups of students sat different levels,it is not poss-ible to provide total reliabilityfigures for the four test versions.More-over,different numbers of students sat different levels of the tests. However,total reliabilityfigures are available from separate testing for Form A(.86)and Form C(.91)on KR21.

The difference in the reliabilities for the various levels and the whole tests(Form A and Form C)is because there are90items in the whole test and only18in each of thefive levels.The reliabilities for the5000level are low because of the small number of subjects (18)and the homogeneity of that group.

Table5shows the correlations between four levels of the four ver-sions of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test.For example,the 2000-word level sections of test Versions A and B correlated.82with each other which was significant at the.0001level.

In general,the correlations are moderate to high and are significant. The lower correlations at the5000level may be due to the small

Table4Reliabilities for the levels in each of the four test versions

Level Form A Form B Form C Form D

2000level.51.67.80.67

3000level.50.39.47.56

UWL.72.63.61.78

5000level.61.38.04.02Table5Correlations between four versions of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test at four of thefive frequency levels in the tests

A/B A/C A/D B/C B/D C/D

2000level.82*.82*.78*.83*.81*.77*

(n=45)

3000level.71*.70*.82*.82*.71*.80*

(n=36)

UWL level.75*.80*.84*.83*.76*.80*

(n=33)

5000level.72.83*.69.49.77.67

(n=18)(p=.004)(p=.003)(p=.1)(p=.003)(p=.006) Note:*significant at.0001level.

number of subjects,but is most likely the result of patchy,unsystem-atic knowledge at this level which is at the edge of most of the lear-ners’low-frequency vocabulary growth.

Because the tests are designed as diagnostic tests,another way to check the equivalence of the four forms is to see if they lead to the same decision regarding individuals who sit the tests.That is,if a criterion score is set at the2000level,do all four forms of the test always put an individual on the same side of the criterion score at that level?We focus on the2000level because this is the dividing line between high-frequency and low-frequency vocabulary.Table6 has the results for the2000-word level on the four forms.Fifteen out of18is a preferred criterion,but the criterion was set at12out of 18because so few learners(only6out of45)gained a score of15 or more on the tests.

Table6shows that62%of the learners(28out of45)were on the same side of the criterion on all four forms,91%(28plus13out of 45)were on the same side of the criterion on three out of the four forms and95%(28plus13plus4out of45)were on the same side of the criterion on two out of the four forms.When the criterion score was set at9,which was the mean of the means of all four versions, by coincidence the results were exactly the same as for the criterion

Table6Number of each individual’s scores in four,three and two versions of the pro-ductive levels test on the same side of the criterion(n=45)

Criterion All four Three out Two out

versions of four of four

1228134

9(grand mean)28134

of12.In terms of decision-making,the tests show a high degree of equivalence.

Unfortunately,although the four versions correlated well enough with each other and led to similar decision-making,the means were not similar enough.Sets of paired t-tests and ANOVAs with repeated measures were carried out and,on the basis of these,pairs of tests at each level were chosen that were not significantly different and had a good correlation(see Table7).For diagnostic purposes,any of the four versions could be used,while for test/retest purposes,the two new parallel versions are recommended.

All correlations are significant at the p=.0001level.Table7shows that the two parallel versions(see Appendix1and Appendix2)are Version C at all levels,and a test made up of the2000-level items from Version B,the3000and UWL items from Version D,and the 5000level items from Version A.Further analysis of Version C showed that it had a reliability of.91on KR21,and discriminated between learners of different proficiency levels.

VI Conclusion

The Productive Vocabulary Levels Test is a reliable,valid and practi-cal measure of vocabulary growth.It is an additional quantitative measure which enables us to research some important issues in vocabulary acquisition.

Paul et al.(1990:1)conclude that for vocabulary testing‘the choice of test format depends on the type of information desired’. The Productive Vocabulary Levels Test provides a useful addition to a range of largely receptive measures that have been used previously. The three formats investigated by Paul et al.were multiple-choice, interview and yes/no.These are all receptive measures in that the word form was provided and the learners were tested on their knowl-edge of the meaning.Similarly,Joe(1994)used three receptive meas-ures(a sensitive multiple-choice test,a more demanding multiple-choice and an interview)to determine the strength of vocabulary

Table7Two equivalent forms with similar means and a good correlation at each level Level2000B/C3000C/D5000A/C UWL C/D Means 6.7/6.3 3.8/3.9 3.7/3.5 5.1/5.7

Standard 3.3/3.3 2.3/2.6 2.3/1.7 2.9/3.8 deviations

Correlations.83.80.82.80knowledge.The Productive Vocabulary Levels Test allows researchers to investigate other aspects of vocabulary knowledge and thus look more effectively at breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Using the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test together with the receptive levels test and the Lexical Frequency Profile(a measure of free active vocabulary,see Laufer and Nation,1995),we can investi-gate questions such as the following:

1)What developments occur in the different types of vocabulary

knowledge over a period of time(for example,receptive,con-trolled productive,free productive)?

2)How are the different types of vocabulary knowledge related to

one another in the same individuals?

3)How do the relationships between the different types of knowl-

edge change over time?

4)How do the different types of knowledge develop in different

input conditions and with different teaching methods?

VII References

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Second Language Research10,157–87.

Francis,W.N.and Kuc˘era,H.1982:Frequency analysis of English usage.

Boston,MA:Houghton Mifflin.

Frederiksen,J.R.1982:A componential theory of reading skills and their interactions.In Mislevy R.J.(ed.)Advances in the psychology of human intelligence,Vol.1.Hillsdale,NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum. Goulden,R.,Nation,P.and Read,J.1990:How large can a receptive vocabulary be?Applied Linguistics11,341–63.

Grabe,W.1991:Current developments in second language reading research.TESOL Quarterly25,375–406.

Henning,G.1991:A study of the effects of contextualisation and familiaris-ation on responses to the TOEFL vocabulary test items.Princeton,NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Joe,A.1994:The effects of text-based tasks on incidental vocabulary learn-ing.Unpublished MA thesis.Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Klein-Braley,C.1985:A cloze-up on the C-test:a study in the construct validation of authentic tests.Language Testing2,76–104.

Klein-Braley,C.and Raatz,U.1984:A survey of research on the C-test.

Language Testing1,134–46.

Laufer,B.and Nation,P.1995:Vocabulary size and use:Lexical richness in L2written production.Applied Linguistics16,307–22.

Meara,P.and Buxton,B.1987:An alternative to multiple choice vocabu-lary tests.Language Testing4,142–51.

Nation,I.S.P.l983:Testing and teaching vocabulary.Guidelines5,12–25.——1990.Teaching and Learning Vocabulary.Boston,MA:Heinle and Heinle.

Nation,P.and Hwang K.1995:Where would general service vocabulary stop and special purposes vocabulary begin?System23,35–41. Paul,P.V.,Stallman,A.C.and O’Rourke,J.P.1990:Using three test for-mats to assess good and poor readers’word knowledge.Technical Report No.509,Center for the Study of Reading,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,IL.

Perkins,K.and Linville,S.E.1987:A construct definition study of a stan-dardized ESL vocabulary test.Language Testing4,125–41. Read,J.1988:Measuring the vocabulary knowledge of second language learners.RELC Journal19,12–25.

——forthcoming:Testing vocabulary knowledge and use.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Appendix1

One of two equivalent versions of the A LEVELS TEST OF PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY:Parallel Version1(Version C)

Complete the underlined words.The example has been done for you.

He was riding a bic ycle.

The2000-word level

1.I’m glad we had this opp to talk.

2.There are a doz eggs in the basket.

3.Every working person must pay income t.

4.The pirates buried the trea on a desert island.

5.Her beauty and cha had a powerful effect on men.

6.La of rain led to a shortage of water in the city.

7.He takes cr and sugar in his coffee.

8.The rich and left all his we to his son.

9.Pup must hand in their papers by the end of the week.

10.This sweater is too tight.It needs to be stret.

11.Ann intro her boyfried to her mother.

12.Teenagers often adm and worship pop singers.

13.If you blow up that balloon any more it will bur.

14.In order to be accepted into the university,he had to impr his grades.

15.The telegram was deli two hours after it had been sent.

16.The differences were so sl that they went unnoticed.

17.The dress you’re wearing is lov.

18.He wasn’t very popu was a teenager,but he has many

friends now.

The3000-world level

1.He has a successful car as a lawyer.

2.The thieves threw ac his face and made him blind.3.To improve the country’s economy,the government decided on econ-

omic ref.

4.She wore a beautiful green go to the ball.

5.The government tried to protect the country’s industry by reducing the

imp of cheap goods.

6.The children’s games were funny atfirst,butfinally got on the parents’

ner.

7.The lawyer gave some wise coun to his client.

8.Many people in England mow the la of their houses on Sunday morn-

ing.

9.The farmer sells the eggs that his he lays.

10.Sudden noises at night sca me

11.France was proc a republic in the18th century.

12.Many people are inj in road accidents every year.

13.Suddenly he was thru into the dark room.

14.He perc a light at the end of the tunnel.

15.Children are not independent.They are att to their parents.

16.She showed off her slefigure in a long narrow dress.

17.She has been changing often because she cannot have a sta

relationship with one person.

18.You must wear a bathing suit on a public beach.You’re not allowed to

be na.

The5000-word level

1.Soldiers usually swear an oa of loyalty to their country.

2.The voter placed the ball in the box.

3.They keep their valuables in a vau at the bank.

4.A bird perched at the window led.

5.The kitten is playing with a ball of ya.

6.The thieves have forced an ent into the building.

7.The small hill was really a burial mou.

8.We decided to celebrate New Year’s E together.

9.The soldier was asked to choose between infantry and cav.

10.This is a complex problem which is difficult to compr.

11.The angry crowd sho the prisoner as he was leaving the court.

12.Don’t pay attention to this rude remark.Just ign it.

13.The management held a secret meeting.The issues discussed were not

disc to the workers.

14.We hear the sergeant bel commands to the troops.

15.The boss got angry with the secretary and it took a lot of tact to

soo him.

16.We do not have adeq information to make a decision.

17.She is not a child,but a mat woman.She can make her own decisions.

18.The prisoner was put in soli confinement.

The University Word List level

1.There has been a recent tr among prosperous families towards a

smaller number of children.

2.The ar of his office is25square meters.

3.Phil the meaning of life.4.According to the communist doc,workers should rule the world.

5.Spending many years together their inti.

6.He usually read the sport sec of the newspaperfirst.

7.Because of the doctors’strike the cli is closed today.

8.There are several misprints on each page of this te.

9.The suspect had both opportunity and mot to commit the murder.

10.They insp all products before sending them out to stores.

11.A considerable amount of evidence was accum during the investi-

gation.

12.The victim’s shirt was satu with blood.

13.He is irresponsible.You cannot re on him for help.

14.It’s impossible to eva without knowing about the

research methods that were used.

15.Hefinally att a position of power in the company.

16.The story tells us about a crime and subs punishment.

17.In a hom class all students are of a similar proficiency.

18.The urge to survive is inh in all creatures.

The10000-word level

1.The baby is wet.Her dia needs changing.

2.The prisoner was released on par.

3.Second year University students in the US are called soph.

4.Her favoriteflowers were or.

5.The insect causes damage to plants by its toxic sec.

6.The evac of the building saved many lives.

7.For many people,wealth is a prospect of unimaginable felic.

8.She found herself in a pred without any hope for a solution.

9.The deac helped with the care of the poor of the parish.

10.The hurricane whi along the coast.

11.Some coal was still smol among the ashes.

12.The dead bodies were muti beyond recognition.

13.She was sitting on a balcony and bas in the sun.

14.For years waves of invaders pill towns along the coast.

15.The rescue attempt could not proceed quickly.It was imp by bad

weather.

16.I wouldn’t hire him.He is unmotivated and indo.

17.Computers have made typewriters old-fashioned and obs.

18.Watch out for his wil tricks.

Appendix2

The second of two equivalent versions of the A LEVELS TEST OF PRO-DUCTIVE VOCABULARY:Parallel Version2

Complete the underlined words.The example has been done for you.

He was riding a bic ycle.

The2000-word level

1.It is the de that counts,not the thought.

2.Plants from the soil through their ro.3.The nu was helping the doctor in the operation room.

4.Since unskilled,he earns low wa.

5.This year long sk are fashionable again.

6.Laws are based upon the principle of jus.

7.He is walking on the ti of his toes.

8.The mechanic had to replace the mo of the car.

9.There is a co of the original report in thefile.

10.They had to cl a steep mountain to reach the cabin.

11.The doctor ex the patient thoroughly.

12.The house was su by a big garden.

13.The railway con London with its suburbs.

14.She wan in the street.

15.The organisers li the number of participants tofifty.

16.This work is not up to your usu standard.

17.They sat down to eat even though they were not hu.

18.You must have been very br to participate in such a dangerous oper-

ation.

The3000-word level

1.I live in a small apa on the secondfloor.

2.The pro of failing the test scared him.

3.Before writing thefinal version,the student wrote several dra.

4.It was a cold day.There was a ch in the air.

5.The cart is pulled by an o.

6.Anthropologists study the struc of ancient societies.

7.After two years in the Army,he received the rank of lieu.

8.The statue is made of mar.

9.Some aristocrats believed that blue bloodflowed through their ve.

10.The secretary assi the boss in organizing the course.

11.His beard was too long.He decided to tr it.

12.People were whir round on the dancefloor.

13.He was on his knees,ple for mercy.

14.You’ll sn that branch if you bend it too far.

15.I won’t tell anybody.My lips are sea.

16.Crying is a nor response to pain.

17.The Emperor of China was the supr ruler of his country.

18.You must be awa that very few jobs are available.

The5000-word level

1.Some peoplefind it difficult to become independent.Instead they prefer

to be tied to their mother’s ap strings.

2.Afterfinishing his degree,he entered upon a new ph in his career.

3.The workmen cleaned up the me before they

4.On Sunday,in his last se in Church,the priest spoke against child

abuse.

5.I saw them sitting on st at the bar drinking beer.

6.Her favorite musical instrument was a tru.

7.The building is heated by a modern heating appa.

8.He received many com on his dancing skill.

9.People manage to buy by raising a mor from a bank.

50Vocabulary-size test

10.At the bottom of a blackboard there is a le for chalk.

11.After falling off his bicycle,the boy was with bru.

12.The child was holding a doll in her arms and hu it.

13.We’ll have to be inventive and de a scheme for earning more money.

14.The picture looks nice;the colours bl really well.

15.Nuts and vegetables are considered who food.

16.The garden was full of fraflowers.

17.Many people feel depressed and gl about the future of the mankind.

18.He is so depressed that he is cont

The University Word List level

1.I’ve had my eyes tested and the optician says my vi is good.

2.The anom of his position is that he is the the committee,

but isn’t allowed to vote.

3.In their geography class,the children are doing a special pro on

North America.

4.In a free country,people can apply for any job.They should not be dis-

criminated against on the basis of colour,age,or s.

5.A true dem should ensure equal rights and opportunities for all citi-

zens.

6.The drug was introduced after medical res indisputably proved its

effectiveness.

7.These courses should be taken in seq,not simultaneously.

8.Despite his physical condition,his int was unaffected.

9.Governments often cut budgets in times offinancial cri.

10.The job offer sounded interesting atfirst.But when he realised what it

would involve,his excitement subs gradually.

11.Research ind that menfind it easier to give up smoking than women.

12.In a lecture,most of the talking is done by the lecturer.In a seminar,

students are expected to part in the discussion.

13.The airport is far away.If you want to ens that you catch your plane,

you have to leave early.

14.It’s difficult to ass a person’s true knowledge by one or two tests.

15.The new manager’s job was to res the company to its former profita-

bility.

16.Even though the student didn’t do well on the midterm exam,he got the

highest mark on thefi.

17.His decision to leave home was not well thought out.It was not based on

rat considerations.

18.The challenging job required a young,successful and dyn candidate.

The10000-word level

1.The new vic was appointed by the bishop.

2.If your lips are sore,try lip sal,not medicine.

3.Much to his chag,he was not offered the job.

4.The actors exchanged ban with reporters.

5.She wanted to marry nobility:a duke,a baron,or at least a vis.

6.Thefloor in the ballroom was a mos of pastel colours.

7.She has contributed a lot of money to various charities.She is known for

her generosity and bene.Batia Laufer and Paul Nation51

8.This is an unusual singer with a range of three oct.

9.A thro controls theflow of gas into an

10.Anyone found loo bombed houses and shops will be severly punished.

11.The crowd soon disp when the police arrived.

12.The wounded man squi on thefloor in agony.

13.The dog crin when it saw the snake.

14.He imme himself in a hot bubbly bath forgetting all his troubles for

a moment.

15.The approaching storm stam the cattle into running wildly.

16.The problem is beginning to assume mam proportions.

17.His vind behaviour towards the thief was understandable.

18.He was for illi trading in drugs.