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Words that second language learners are likely to hear, read, and use*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

DOUGLAS J. DAVIDSON ,
PETER INDEFREY  and
MARIANNE GULLBERG
DOUGLAS J. DAVIDSON*
Affiliation:
F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive NeuroimagingMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
PETER INDEFREY
Affiliation:
F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive NeuroimagingMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
MARIANNE GULLBERG
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
*
Address for correspondence: Doug Davidson, F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands[email protected]
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Abstract

In the present study, we explore whether multiple data sources may be more effective than single sources at predicting the words that language learners are likely to know. Second language researchers have hypothesized that there is a relationship between word frequency and the likelihood that words will be encountered or used by second language learners, but it is not yet clear how this relationship should be effectively measured. An analysis of word frequency measures showed that spoken language frequency alone may predict the occurrence of words in learner textbooks, but that multiple corpora as well as textbook status can improve predictions of learner usage.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 133 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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Footnotes

*

Arna van Doorn assembled the vocabulary lists from the three Dutch textbooks. The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics provided access to the CELEX, the CGN, and the ESF corpora. The analysis was conducted using R (R Development Team, 2005), and the stats (R Development Team, 2005) and MASS (Venables & Ripley, 2002) libraries. This research was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions, and Jan Hulstijn for providing helpful comments and references for textbook vocabulary selection including, in addition to those cited in the text, Hazenberg (1994) and Sciarone (1979).

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