Vocabulary strand
Vocabulary strand
Vocabulary strand
This strand researches a range of issues surrounding the role of vocabulary in language education. Amongst other things, we research how vocabulary knowledge develops in first, second, and other languages; how words are used in different social contexts (especially in educational settings); and how vocabulary knowledge interacts with the skills of reading and writing. We host regular talks by both local and visiting speakers and an active reading group.
Feature projects
These are some of the projects we are involved in to explore the themes of our strand.
MULTIWRITE: Interactions Between First, Second and Third Languages (The Research Council of Norway)
The learnability of 50,000 English formulaic expressions
A predictive model and a normative database (Hong Kong Research Grants Council)
Feature publications
Durrant, Siyanova-Chanturia, Kremmel, & Sonbul (2022). Research methods in vocabulary studies. John Benjamins.
Alshehri & Zhang (2022). The Lexical Basis of Second Language Reading Comprehension:. From (Sub-) Lexical Knowledge to Processing Efficiency. Language Learning, 72.
Durrant & Brenchley (2019). Development of vocabulary sophistication across genres in English children's writing. Reading and Writing, 32(8).
Zhang & Koda (2017). Assessing L2 vocabulary depth with word associates format tests: issues, findings, and suggestions. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 2(1).