Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / Language development has been studied for many years. The beginning vocabularies are easy to count ana record. As tne child grows and moves about, his speaking vocabulary increases very rapidly. Some estimates suggest that a minimum speaking vocabulary at six years would include three thousand words. New words have come into children's speaking vocabularies as a result of modern technology since World War II. Lists of spontaneous vocabulary furnish material for teachers and text book writers. The purpose of this study is to analyze two lists recorded in 1954 and 1955. An attempt has been made to classify the new list. The lists were compared with three existing lists, Rinsland, International Kindergarten Union and Gates.

This study investigated the significance of semantics in computer-generated word frequency counts in response to a call for new word lists (Read, 2000; Gardner, 2007). Read claims that no corpus projects to date have produced any "definitive, stand-alone word-frequency lists" (p. 226). Many researchers are wary of the fact that the concept of a word is never clearly defined in most studies that have dealt with word frequency counts. It is clear from the research that one universally acceptable construct for the concept of word does not exist. In fact, many past word frequency counts only examine word forms without considering the word meanings and the possible effects of homography on lists. Ming-Tzu and Nation (2004) did some research on the Academic Word List (AWL) that addresses some criticisms of word-frequency lists. They evaluate the extent of homography throughout the AWL. However, words found in the AWL are often not a part of the highest frequency word-forms in English. The present study focuses on high frequency words. It evaluates a randomized sample of 46 lemmas that occur at least 1500 times in the British National Corpus (BNC). A further random sampling of 200 examples for each lemma, in context, was semantically analyzed and tallied. One hundred of these examples were from the written portion and the other 100 from the spoken portion. The list of meanings for each word was compiled using conflated WordNet senses and some additional senses. Each context was double and sometimes triple rated. The results indicate that the impact of semantic frequency versus form-based frequency is considerable. The study suggests that the presence of homography tends to be extensive in many high-frequency word forms, across major registers of the language, and within each of the four major parts of speech. It further suggests that basing frequency on semantics will considerably alter the content of a high-frequency word list.

Vocabulary in a second language is an indispensable building block of all comprehension (Folse, 2006; Nation, 2006). Teachers in content area classes such as science, math, and social studies frequently teach content specific vocabulary, but are not aware of the obstacles that can occur when students do not know the basic words. Word lists such as the General Service List (GSL) were created to assist students and teachers (West, 1953). The GSL does not adequately take into account the high level of polysemy of many common English words, nor has it been updated by genre to reflect specific content domains encountered by secondary science students in today's high stakes classes such as chemistry. This study examines how many words of the first 1000 words of the GSL occurred in the secondary chemistry textbooks sampled, how often the first 1000 words of the GSL were polysemous, and specifically which multiple meanings occurred. A discussion of results includes word tables that list multiple meanings present, example phrases that illustrate the context surrounding the target words, suggestions for a GSL that is genre specific to secondary chemistry textbooks and that is ranked by meaning as well as type, and implications for both vocabulary materials and classroom instruction for ELLs in secondary chemistry classes. Findings are essential to second language (L2) researchers, materials developers, publishers, and teachers.

Many researchers (e.g., Nation, 2001, 2015; Schmitt, 2000) have recognized the importance of vocabulary learning in second language (L2) or additional language (AL) acquisition. The strong effects of lexical and background knowledge on L2reading comprehension have similarly been found in various studies (e.g., Hu & Nation, 2000; Rokni & Hajilari, 2013). In the case of Japanese language, the opportunities for acquiring the lexical and background knowledge associated with Japanese history and culture, especially traditional culture, are scant, because only a small number of Japanese pedagogical materials deal minimally with these topics. Meanwhile, many learners are motivated to study Japanese because of their interest in Japanese history and culture, according to a survey conducted by the Japan Foundation in 2012. This project aimed to increase the opportunities for learning Japanese history and traditional culture through the development of new pedagogical materials based on kabuki, and then the empirical evaluation of the developed pedagogical materials. Nine Chinese-as-a-first-language Japanese learners at the upper-intermediate level participated in the nine-week online course, including the pre- and post-course tests in the first and last weeks. Employing a multi-method research approach, the study examined the changes in learners’ lexical and background knowledge related to Japanese history and culture, their reading comprehension, and their interest in kabuki. Four kinds of multiple-choice tests were administered to collect the quantitative data. In addition, the qualitative data were gathered through the pre- and post-course questionnaires and post-course individual interviews. Overall, the findings indicated that almost all participants increased their background knowledge of kabuki, as well as their vocabulary related to kabuki and general theatrical performances. The results in other areas, such as historical vocabulary, vocabulary depth, reading comprehension, and historical background knowledge were mixed. Further, concerning the depth of vocabulary knowledge, it was found that the learning of vocabulary depth was more difficult than learning of vocabulary breadth. Likewise, the knowledge of use, such as collocations and register constraints, was found to be more difficult to learn than other aspects of vocabulary depth. The participants’ reports in the post-course questionnaire and individual interviews showed that most participants seemed to have increased their interest in kabuki. Overall, the first-of-their-kind developed pedagogical materials contributed to the development of lexical and background knowledge, specifically knowledge associated with Japanese traditional culture and history. This study may provide a model for an evidence-based approach to the development of pedagogical materials that practitioners can adopt or adapt. / Graduate