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Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 27:3 (2022) ► pp.291–320

Handle it in-house?

Learner corpora frequency lists and lexical sophistication

ORCID logo | University of Pittsburgh
ORCID logo | University of Pittsburgh
| University of Pittsburgh
| University of Pittsburgh

Vocabulary lists of high-frequency lexical items are an important resource in language education and a key product of corpus research. However, no single vocabulary list will be useful for every learning context, with the appropriateness of such lists affected by the corpora on which they are based. This paper investigates the impact of corpus selection on one measure of lexical sophistication, Advanced Guiraud, focusing on two frequency lists originating from an in-house learner corpus (PELIC) and a global learner corpus (Cambridge Learner Corpus). This analysis shows that frequency lists derived from both types of learner corpus can effectively serve as the basis for measuring the development of lexical sophistication, regardless of the specific program of the learners. Therefore, publicly available learner corpus frequency lists can be a reliable resource for stakeholders interested in the lexical gains of language learners.

Keywords: frequency lists, learner corpora, lexical development, lexical sophistication, vocabulary lists
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Learner corpora (LC) and lexical sophistication
    • 2.1In-house corpora: The University of Pittsburgh English Language Institute Corpus (PELIC)
    • 2.2Global corpora: ETS Corpus of Non-Native Written English (ETS)
    • 2.3Lexical sophistication
    • 2.4Motivation for the current study
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Frequency lists
    • 3.2ETS comparison
    • 3.3Data collection and description
    • 3.4Comparison with lexical diversity
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Lexical sophistication descriptive statistics
    • 4.2Lexical sophistication inferential statistics
    • 4.3AG comparison to vocD
    • 4.4Results summary
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20024.nai
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