Arabic-L:PEDA:Relating Vocab with Proficiency Levels

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 09 Apr 2013
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Relating Vocab with Proficiency Levels

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1)
Date: 09 Apr 2013
From:Robert Ricks <rsricks at gmail.com>
Subject:Relating Vocab with Proficiency Levels

As far as I know, there are no empirical answers to your question—only
impressions and anecdotes. Mahmoud al-Batal has written that general
studies on vocabulary size as well as anecdotal reports from Arabic
teachers suggest that "we can estimate that for a learner of Arabic to
reach the Advanced level of proficiency, a vocabulary in the range of 3000
to 3500 high-frequency words is needed" ("Playing with Words", 333)*.

In addition, the intro to Al-Kitaab (at least the previous edition)
suggests that a student could reach an intermediate high level of
proficiency by reaching the end of Book Two. There are around 2000 words in
the first two books of Al-Kitaab (as counted in the glossary), although the
count by root or word family would, of course, be lower.

My dissertation research (forthcoming) will show to what extent Arabic
learner vocabulary size correlates with self-rated proficiency. If the
instruments I've developed prove valid, they might be useful for a future
study that uses official proficiency ratings.

Robert

*the Al-Batal article is from Wahba et al.'s 2006 *Handbook for Arabic
Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century.*

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