英语学术论文写作作业 Section8 Task5

Task 5

Look at the text below. What do you think will follow: will the author agree or disagree with this statement? Then work in groups and write a short paragraph showing disagreement with the above statement.

At first glance, it may seem that assessing the vocabulary knowledge of secondary language learners is both necessary and reasonably straightforward (Read, 2000: 1)

Words are the basic building blocks of language, the units of meaning from which larger structures such as sentences, paragraphs and whole texts are formed. For second language (L2) learners, acquisition of vocabulary is a conscious and demanding process. Even at an advanced level, learners still have the limitations in their knowledge of L2 words.

However, vocabulary acquisition is not simple memorization of word lists but a complex, multi-stage process. It is necessary and reasonable to assess L2 learners’ knowledge of vocabulary when evaluating their language competence. If learners say they know a word, they may mean that they know it is a correct not a pseudo word in the target language, or their knowledge of it may reach the other end of the continuum, that is they can use it in almost all possible contexts, with proper connotation and register.

But to assess vocabulary knowledge is no easy matter because of the complexity of it. Researchers on the assessment of vocabulary develop in different directions. Some focus on the measurement of vocabulary size, with C-test (Chapple, 1994), Multiple Choice (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996) and Checklist Test (Read, 2000) as the basic means. Some devote to the depth of vocabulary knowledge by the use of the Word Associates Test (Read, 1993) and the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996). Still some pay special attention to productive vocabulary knowledge, employing Productive Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1993) and Measuring the Lexical Features in Writing (Read, 2000). There is no one single test which can measure all different aspects of vocabulary knowledge available yet, so most researchers in this field adopt a “multiple test approach”.