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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.285-302
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 10 Feb 2023 Revised 27 Mar 2023 Accepted 19 Apr 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202304.285

Language Aptitude in the Development of Vocabulary Breadth and Depth of EFL Learners with Different Proficiency Levels

Lingjie Tang ; Jayeon Lim
(first author) MA Graduate, Dept. of English Language and Literature, University of Seoul tanglingjie9@gmail.com
(corresponding author) Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Seoul, Tel: 02) 6490-2521 limjy@uos.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of language learning aptitude in the development of vocabulary breadth and depth of adult EFL learners with different proficiency levels. To this end, sixty Chinese EFL college students were divided into two proficiency groups of high and low and participated in three online tests of measuring vocabulary breadth, depth and aptitude. The results showed that high proficiency (HP) learners outperformed low proficiency (LP) learners in three subdivided aptitudes of rote memory, grammatical sensitivity and phonetic coding ability. HP also outperformed LP in vocabulary breadth at all frequency levels, indicating a positive relationship between language aptitude and vocabulary breadth. With vocabulary depth, HP produced more valid paradigmatic associations than LP. However, no difference was found based on the two proficiency group’s responses to syntagmatic and phonological associations of the vocabulary depth test. The results implicate that L2 learners’ vocabulary depth developed with a more paradigmatic tendency as their proficiency increased. No difference was found in syntagmatic associations between the two proficiency groups, indicating a possibility of it continuously posing a challenge for L2 learners. As with phonological associations, it seems that L2 learners rarely rely on phonological information when learning vocabulary. Among different aptitudes, rote memory strongly contributed to vocabulary breadth at all frequency levels and to paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations in LP learners. The contribution of aptitudes in HP was unclear. The findings show that rote memorization of vocabulary may be helpful for low proficiency learners, whereas additional factors may be at play in advanced level learners. Thus, further studies are needed in investigating additional factors that may contribute to vocabulary development as learners’ proficiency increases.

Keywords:

language aptitude, L2 vocabulary breadth and depth, English proficiency level, Chinese EFL learners

Acknowledgments

This research has been revised and extended from the master’s thesis of the first author.

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