Definition of Vocabulary Profile and Vocabulary Profiler Categories Based on The Word Frequency

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4. Definition of Vocabulary Profile and Vocabulary Profiler

Vocabulary profile, according to Graves 2005, is a collection of words classified by their tokens, families, and frequencies. Browne and Culligan 2008 assert that the integration between a work under CALL Computer Assisted Language Learning and vocabulary teaching leads to the emerging of a vocabulary profiler program. Therefore, a vocabulary profiler is an online “public domain computer program” Laufer, 1994 developed by Tom Cobb which can group the vocabulary in a text into frequency levels Paul, 2005; Nemati, 2009.

5. Categories Based on The Word Frequency

There are four types of word frequency, respectively: high frequency which is divided into the first thousand most common words K1 and the second thousand most common words K2; Academic Word Lists AWL; and Off-list words OL Nation, 1990. The first 3000 word families of English “represent the current best estimate of the basic learner lexicon of English” Schmitt Schmitt, 2012. Below is the example of thirty words under the category of K1 taken from Rebecca Sitton’s Spelling Sourcebook Series Sitton, 1992: Table 1. Examples of the first thousand most common words K1 Sitton, 1992 The A Is It From Or Had Their Do About Of To You Be I By Not Said Will How And In That This Have One Which If Each Up The vocabulary profiler on http:www.lextutor.ca Cobb, n.d. provides the list of K1, K2, and Academic Words Lists. The K1 is divided into two categories which are function and content words. Function words are the grammatical items to organise a language, while 6 content words nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs define the lexical density in a text Vidiakovic Barker, 2010. The AWL is split up into two parts which are university word lists and academic word lists. However, this study grouped all the academic words into AWL. On the web, the list is presented in an alphabetical order. Here is the example of the K2 word lists from the online Compleat Lexical Tutor. Only one word which is the first appearance for every letter in the alphabet is taken. Table 2. Examples of the second thousand most common words K2 Cobb, n.d. Abroad Fade Key Pack Ugly Baby Gap Ladder Qualify Vain Cage Habit Mad Rabbit Waist Damage Ice Nail Sacred Yard Eager Jaw Oar Tail Zero Furthermore, the AWL developed by Coxhead 2000 cointains 570 word families excluding the most frequent 2,000 words. She justified that the coverage of AWL in an academic text could be up to 570 word families or as much as 10 of the total words. It means that even in academic texts, the learner will find 90 of the general service list GSL or the 2,000 most common words. Hence, the academic words are only supportive to the topic in the text they occur. Table 3 shows the example of AWL sublist families retrieved from Sublist Families of the Academic Word Lists 2015 cited in Cobb’s online vocabulary profiler. Table 3. Examples of the Academic Word Lists Cobb, n.d. Analyze Assess Available Consist Contract Define Economy 7 Approach Assume Benefit Constitue Create Derive Environment Area Authority Concept Context Data Distribute Establish Off-list family words consist of proper nouns, unusual words, specialist vocabulary, acronyms, abbreviations, and misspelling Cobb, n.d.. Table 4 provides the examples of some Off-list words appearing in various articles. Table 4. Examples of the Off- list words Menken, 2010; Walinski, Kredens, Goźdź- Roszkowski, 2007; Laufer Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010 Appeal Biology Criticism Moscow Opposition Rebar Reference Richard Shish

6. Benefits of Knowing Low and High-Frequency Words