中国非英语专业研究生词汇量不同词频等级分布状况研究

A Study of the Vocabulary Distribution of Chinese Non-English Major Postgraduates

文章探讨了中国非英语专业研究生的接受性和产出性词汇量在高频、中频、低频以及学术类词汇四个词频等级的分布情况。研究结果表明,我国非英语专业研究生能够掌握大多数高频词和学术类词汇的基本含义,但由于他们对中低频词尤其是低频词的认知率较低,在今后的学习中仍有可能面临词汇上的困难;研究生的产出性词汇量要远低于其接受性词汇量,且大部分产出性词汇仍属于高频词;尽管学生对学术类词汇的认知率较高,但他们在该词频上的产出性词汇量仍有待进一步提高。针对上述结果,研究建议在研究生英语教学过程中教师应注意对学生词汇学习策略的培养,并通过数据驱动学习、转变写作任务模式等途径扩大学生的产出性词汇量。

This paper investigates Chinese non-English major postgraduates' vocabulary distribution at four different word levels: high-frequency,mid-frequency,low-frequency and academic vocabulary.Two vocabulary levels tests—the Vocabulary Levels Test(Schmitt,Schmitt and Clapham,2000) and the Productive Levels Test(Laufer and Nation,1999)—were employed in the study to measure the postgraduates' productive and receptive vocabulary.The results reveal that 1) the postgraduates may still face vocabulary problems when they read academic English texts due to their limited vocabulary size of mid-and-low frequency words;2) the words they could produce most are high-frequency words;and 3) although the postgraduates know the meaning of most academic words,their productive vocabulary size at this level still needs improvement.These results indicate that in postgraduate English teaching,vocabulary learning strategies should be introduced to the students and the activities that aim to enlarge their productive vocabulary,with the academic vocabulary in particular,should be incorporated.