Synchronous (Onsite) Vocabulary Research Report/Paper (25 mins Onsite)
An Investigation into the Vocabulary Size of Taiwanese Junior High School Students
This study examined the vocabulary size of junior high school students in southern Taiwan. Altogether, 343 participants from two junior high schools, 1 urban and 1 rural, in Kaohsiung City Taiwan participated. The data were collected by the Test of the First 1,000 Words of English (Nation, 1993), and the 2,000-word level and 3,000-word level tests of the revised version of Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000). The averaged vocabulary size of the first-, second-, and the third-year students were 503, 534, and 658 words respectively.
The results indicated that the junior students of higher academic levels carried a larger vocabulary. Moreover, the vocabulary size of the urban students was found to have a slighter lead than that of their counterparts in the rural area. The findings could suggest possible improvements for the teaching and learning of English vocabulary for the junior high school classrooms in Taiwan and Asia.
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Jeng-yih Tim Hsu is an associate professor at the Department of English, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Tim holds a doctorate in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. He earned his Master in English Language and Linguistics from University of Arizona, USA. He is fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese, and also speaks Japanese. His teaches courses on business writing, business presentation, and his current research interests center around adapting Problem-based Learning (PBL) into EFL classrooms.
