Читать книгу The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics - Carol A. Chapelle - Страница 156

The first level of vocabulary knowledge involves whether learners can recognize and attribute meaning to a lexical item when it is presented to them in isolation, based on the idea that the core element of word knowledge is the ability to establish a link (which ultimately should be automatic) between the form of an L2 word and its meaning. This kind of test has often been criticized for a negative effect in encouraging learners to engage in too much supposedly unproductive study of decontextualized word lists, but there is a strong counterargument that the learning of high‐frequency vocabulary using mnemonic techniques is an efficient means of establishing a foundation for rich vocabulary development (Elgort, 2011; Nation, 2013, pp. 437–78). This issue aside, recognition‐type tests have been shown to work effectively for a variety of assessment purposes.

The simplest form of recognition assessment is the yes/no format, in which the test takers are presented with a set of words and are simply asked to indicate whether they know the meaning of each one or not. The list might begin as follows:

 bag

 ill

 predict

 estle

 seminar

 broccoli

 sanglous

Obviously this format depends on self‐report and is unsuitable for higher‐stakes assessment situations in which learners have a vested interest in overstating their knowledge. It includes an indirect validity check in that a certain proportion of the items are not actual words (like estle and sanglous in the list above), which provides a basis for adjusting the scores of test takers who claim knowledge of such words. Research shows that the effectiveness of the format varies to some extent according to the learners' background but it can be a very useful means of estimating vocabulary size and even a quick method of indicating the learner's level of language competence.

A more widely used approach to assessing recognition knowledge is to require the test takers to show that they can associate each L2 word with an expression of its meaning, which may be in the form of a synonym or short definition in L2, or—if the learners share a common language background—an equivalent expression in their own language. The classic format of this kind is multiple choice, where typically the target word is presented in a short, nondefining sentence, together with four possible synonyms or definitions. For young children and other nonliterate learners, an oral version of multiple choice is the picture–vocabulary format, in which the test taker listens to a word as it is spoken by the person administering the test and chooses which of four pictures represents the word meaning.