Vocabulary in 10th Grade: The receptive vocabulary size of 10th graders in Iceland

• Main Author: Lára Marta Fleckenstein 1979-
• Other Authors: Háskóli Íslands
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Enska; Reykjavík; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/23593

The aim of this study is to examine the average receptive vocabulary size of students in 10th grade Iceland and compare the results to the outcome of the standardized reading comprehension from the test groups' National Exam as well as their written essay from the same test. My motivation for the research was to find out how well students are prepared for further studies, since high proficiency English is becoming essential for students that wish to succeed at university level in Iceland. In order to achieve my goals I used a vocabulary size test designed by Paul Nation and tested 66 students in a suburban primary school in the Reykjavík area. I compared the results to the test groups' reading comprehension results from the National Exam and to the grades of their written essay. My results revealed that too many students do not have the language competence necessary to deal with complex texts and authentic materials used in secondary school. When analyzing students' results individually it was interesting to see how accurate the results from the vocabulary size test were. Students that tested with a large vocabulary did much better on the receptive part of the National Exam. This indicates how important it is for language teachers to focus more on explicit vocabulary teaching. However, students´ productive skills on the National Exam were not as predictable. There were nonetheless some anomalies concerning the grading of the written essay on the national exam which make the scoring of the essays not as reliable as the results of the reading comprehension.