Comparing Phonological and Orthographic Vocabulary Size: Do Vocabulary Tests Underestimate the Knowledge of Some Learners
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Any description of what it means to know a word in a foreign language is likely to include recognition of form, both how a word sounds when heard and what it looks like when written. However, tests of vocabulary knowledge focus almost exclusively on the written form of the word. We have little idea of learners' phonological vocabulary knowledge or how it might interact with orthographic knowledge. It is suspected that written vocabulary tests may underestimate the vocabulary knowledge of native Arabic speakers, who often handle English orthography poorly. This paper reports a comparison of the phonological and orthographic vocabulary sizes of Greek and Arabic native speakers. Results suggest that written tests do not underestimate Arabic speakers' vocabulary size. The two aspects of vocabulary knowledge develop differently with language level. Very proficient learners of EFL are characterized by an orthographic word recognition much greater than their phonological word recognition. Toute définition de ce que cela veut dire de connaître un mot dans une langue étrangère devrait inclure la reconnaissance de sa forme, tant sonore quand on l'entend qu'écrite quand on le voit. Toutefois, les examens visant à évaluer la connaissance du vocabulaire se concentrent presque tous exclusivement sur la forme écrite des mots. Nous en savons peu sur le vocabulaire phonologique des apprenants ou son lien avec le vocabulaire orthographique. On soupçonne que les examens écrits ne reflètent pas les connaissances en matière de vocabulaire des arabophones, qui ont souvent de la difficulté avec l'orthographe anglaise. L'article signale qu'une comparaison de la taille des vocabulaires phonologiques et orthographiques a été effectuée chez des personnes dont la langue maternelle est le grec ou l'arabe, et les résultats obtenus aux examens ont correspondu à la taille du vocabulaire des arabophones. Les deux aspects de la connaissance du vocabulaire se développent différemment selon le niveau de langage. Chez les apprenants très compétents en ALS, la reconnaissance orthographique des mots est supérieure à la reconnaissance phonologique.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.032 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".