A Cross-Sectional Study of English-Major Students’ Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Knowledge

This study explores the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The relationship between productive and receptive vocabulary can be framed as dichotomous (with two separate stores), or developmental (with words that start as part of the receptive state moving to the productive state). This study draws on both understandings.
The relationship was investigated at frequency levels and different years of study. The study also makes a distinction between controlled productive and free productive knowledge. Receptive knowledge was analysed using the first four categories (a word-recognition task and a translation task) of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Paribakht and Wesche, 1997). Controlled productive use was investigated by the fifth category of the VKS (a sentence-writing task). Free productive use data was collected with an argumentative essay-writing task by Laufer and Nation (1995).
To ensure consistency of the analysis, the same words and the same scoring systems were applied in these tests. The words produced in the free productive test were lemmatised, grouped based on frequency levels, and graded in terms of correctness of usage in order to facilitate comparison with the other data sets.
The data was quantitatively analysed within both the dichotomous and the developmental understandings of the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. Within the dichotomous approach, a three-scale scoring system was used to grade the correctness of the translations and the words used in the tests. Within the developmental approach, I tracked how the participants' word knowledge changed by adopting Paribakht and Wesche's (1997) five-scale scoring.
The data showed that all forms of vocabulary knowledge were all affected by frequency levels and years of study. The same data also showed that the knowledge moved forward and backward on a continuum. The findings were triangulate with qualitative analysis. Overall, the findings suggest that words cannot be simply classified into receptive or productive vocabulary stores. The study shows that we need a more sophisticated view of vocabulary knowledge that allows for different patterns of development for different aspects of vocabulary knowledge. Word knowledge gradually moves along the cline with its aspects moving to receptive or productive states at different degrees and at different time.