An investigation into local senior secondary students' competence in English vocabulary knowledge

Abstract

Various research has been done to investigate the relationship between learners’ vocabulary size and collocation knowledge (Gyllstad, 2007; Brown, 2012; Nizonkita, 2012). However, none has been done on Hong Kong senior secondary students who are taught under the new education curriculum and take the new Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination before pursuing their university studies. This study involved 90 secondary five students as participants who were divided into high-, medium- and low-ability groups. They were asked to do a test paper for the assessment of their vocabulary sizes and collocation knowledge. Also included in the test paper was a task to assess their vocabulary levels, aiming to find out the word levels they need to work on for the improvement of their academic vocabulary for university pursuit.

The results found a significant positive correlation between the vocabulary size and collocation knowledge for the 90 participants as a whole group; interestingly, when divided into three proficiency groups, such a correlation was obtained only in the medium-ability group. Findings also indicated that the academic vocabulary level (AVL) closely correlated with the 3,000 and 5,000 word levels. Most of the students in the high-ability group performed well at AVL, and this group needed only to work on the 5,000 word level for the improvement of their academic vocabulary, whereas the other two groups needed to work on both the 3,000 and 5,000 word levels for the same purpose. The study concluded with suggested ways for teachers to help their students develop a bigger vocabulary size and improve their collocation knowledge.