10 2 technical words from other areas one person’s technical vocabulary is
another person’s low-frequency vocabulary, and 3 words that just occur rarely.” p. 11
Low-frequency words are usually marked in italics. In friendly conversation, about 5 of the running words are low-frequency words, in
newspaper they are about 10, meanwhile in academic texts about 10. Then, Haycraft, as quoted by Hatch and Brown 1995, divides vocabulary
into two distinctions namely receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary. Receptive vocabulary is words which learners can recognize and understand when
they are used in context. It is vocabulary that learners recognize when they see it in context but do not use it in speaking and writing Webb, 2009. Meanwhile,
productive vocabulary is words which learners understand and can pronounce correctly and use grammatically correct in both speaking and writing. Productive
vocabulary involves what learners needed for receptive vocabulary added with the ability to speak or write at the appropriate time Webb, 2009.
2. Vocabulary Size
Research shows that learners need to know approximately 98 of the words in written or spoken language in order to understand it well. Learners need numbers
of coverage in written texts about 8,000 to 9,000 words families to read newspapers, novels, and some academic texts. Meanwhile the spoken mode such as lecturers and
movies requires fewer word families, about 6,000 to 7,000 Nation, 2006. The distribution of the 98 text coverage is shown in Table 2.1.
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Table 2.1 Vocabulary Size to Get 98 Coverage in Various Kinds of Written Texts
1 Measuring Vocabulary Size
It is not easy to plan an appropriate vocabulary development program without
knowing the students’ vocabulary size. Accordingly, Nation 2012 states that vocabulary size measurement is important for planning, diagnosis, and
research. The result of the vocabulary measurement can be used as the guideline to plan an appropriate vocabulary development program.
a Receptive Vocabulary Size Test RVST
Receptive Vocabulary Size Test RVST is a kind of test to measure the controlled receptive vocabulary. It was originally created by Nation 1983 and then
was revised and expanded by Schmitt and Clapham 2001. The RVST categorizes the knowledge of vocabulary based on the word frequency of 2,000 word level,
3,000 word level, 5,000 word level, and 10,000 word level. The RVST consists of 150 items with 30 items in each level. The words are randomly selected from the
lists. For each item, there are three words that are required to be selected from a group of six in order to match with the corresponding paraphrase. The example of
RVST is shown in Figure 2.2. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
