Lexical Coverages, Inferencing Unknown Words and Reading Comprehension: How Are They Related?

Laufer, Batia

doi:10.1002/tesq.3004

Cited by 43 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Approximately 90% of texts for reading is covered by around 3,000 word families 1 . To read independently, a person has to know 7,000-8,000 word families receptively (Laufer 2020). According to Nation (2006), 95% comprehension in novels is realistic with the knowledge of 4,000 word families, whereas in audition, with 3,000 word families.…”

Section: Teaching English: From a Foreign To An International Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Yelenevskaya

Protassova

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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The purpose of this article is to help language teachers at all levels of education to understand in depth problems posed by linguistic superdiversity. Based on the study of scholarly literature, documents of educational bodies and the authors experience in language teaching in different countries, the article answers the question of how the teaching of world languages such as English and Russian is changing due to the recognition that their functions and status differ in various countries. We explore why, despite gradual changes in curricula, there is still pervasiveness of pedagogies attempting to achieve a perfect command of the studied languages, without considering students needs and language repertoires, the local sociolinguistic situation and labor market requirements. We focus on methods of teaching English and Russian, taking into account various aspects of language ideologies related to mono- and pluricentricity. To show the dependence of language teaching on the socio-cultural situation, we apply the concept of Critical Language Awareness covering aspects of language variation and changes in attitudes to normativity, prescriptivism and regional language varieties. We also show that innovative pedagogies put new demands on teachers requiring that they have to adjust to new teaching formats, acquire skills of using educational technologies and teaching diverse student populations. The focus of the review on teaching English and Russian proves that despite different histories of their pedagogies, the interplay of language, ethnicity, identity, culture and education systems is significant for both, and without taking all these elements into account, the goal of educating effective multilinguals is elusive.

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Section: Teaching English: From a Foreign To An International Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Yelenevskaya

Protassova

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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“…">They were used in previous pedagogical coverage studies ( Lady Chatterley's Lover , Mid‐Frequency readers). Their lexis comprises an atypically high proportion of items from the first two 1,000‐levels of the BNC/COCA (90% or more, as termed comprehensible input for nonadvanced learners by Laufer, 2020b; COCA Speech, Mid‐Frequency readers, House, M.D ., Presidents, Lady Chatterley's Lover ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We do not claim that the coverage provided by the NFL7 is sufficient for comprehension of authentic, advanced texts. A coverage of 98% is considered optimal and 95% minimal for that purpose (Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer & Ravenhorst‐Kalovski, 2010; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011), although this has arguably been revised down recently to 90% in certain cases (Laufer, 2020b). However, none of the other lists at the 3,000 level offer the necessary coverage either.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Together with 2−3% proper nouns in graded readers (Nation, 2006b), the NFL at 7% cutoff provides 90% text coverage. There is now preliminary evidence that at 90% coverage, readers can infer the meanings of enough unfamiliar words to increase their comprehended text vocabulary to 95% and thus achieve text comprehension (Laufer, 2020b).…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Nuclear Word Family List: A List of the Most Frequent Family Members, Including Base and Affixed Words

Cobb

Laufer

2021

Language Learning

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This article introduces the NFL7 (Nuclear Family List 7), a list of the 2,887 most frequent “nuclear” word families, that is, families that include just the most frequent family members and exclude those that constitute less than 7% of family occurrences. The NFL7 was developed by using a dedicated computer program, the Nuclear List Builder (freely available to users). To construct the list, we used that tool to reduce the complete BNC/COCA lists of the 3,000 most frequent word families from 19,062 to 7,293 word types and from 9,132 to 5,610 lemmas. Despite this reduction, the NFL7 compares favorably with other lists in terms of text coverage, and it includes a small number of the most frequent derivational affixes. We argue that the nuclearization of the list makes it suitable for nonadvanced learners, for teaching and testing both receptive and productive knowledge, and for instruction in basic morphology.

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“…A possible explanation for the negligible vocabulary learning from reading non-glossed texts in these experiments is that some of the texts used were not quite comprehensible WITHOUT the glosses. When a text is not understood by learners, they will not be able to make use of context to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words (Laufer, 2020). Whether a text will be sufficiently well understood depends on numerous factors (Bernhardt, 2010;Koda, 2005), and one such factor is what proportion of the words in the text the learner already knows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glossing and vocabulary learning

Boers

2021

Lang. Teach.

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This article offers a critical review of research on the use of glossing and its contribution to second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Discussion topics include the complexity of estimating the effectiveness of glossing relative to reading non-glossed texts, the quest for optimal implementations of glossing, issues of ecological validity, and ambiguity around the nature of vocabulary learning from glosses. The general conclusion is that, despite the substantial number of research studies on this subject, many questions remain to which only tentative and provisional answers are currently available. This is partly owing to the wide diversity in research designs across studies and the lack of transparency of many research reports. Suggestions are made for further research on glossing with a view to enabling future systematic reviews to produce more nuanced answers and more informed recommendations for the design of L2 reading materials.

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Lexical Coverages, Inferencing Unknown Words and Reading Comprehension: How Are They Related?

Cited by 43 publications

References 20 publications

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

The Nuclear Word Family List: A List of the Most Frequent Family Members, Including Base and Affixed Words

Glossing and vocabulary learning

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