Assessment and Learning: What Can Students Learn from Taking Vocabulary Tests?

Vocabulary tests appear to be enjoying enormous popularity across a whole range of stakeholders in education including, perhaps surprisingly, language learners. Since many vocabulary tests are available in simple, easy-to-use formats, accessible free-of-charge on-line and provide immediate feedback to test-takers, their appeal to teachers and students is understandable. The fact that most vocabulary tests can be administered and marked quickly may also help to explain their attraction to busy teachers. For many years, researchers in applied linguistics have attached importance to the development and application of vocabulary tests for investigating the size and growth of learners' vocabulary (e.g. [1], [2], [3]). In fact, some of the tests and test formats have become recognized as 'industry standard' assessment instruments. However, it is conceivable that vocabulary tests that were developed initially for use in research have become popular among teachers for the wrong reasons. In fact, a number of scholars have expressed concern about the dominance of context-independent approaches to vocabulary assessment [4]. Tests have also been accused of assessing only knowledge of word forms and promoting the assumption that that competence in a second language involves a distinct vocabulary construct [5]. This paper examines three of the most widely used vocabulary tests and considers the extent to which they contribute to assessment and learning. The tests reviewed are the Vocabulary Levels Test [6], X-Lex: Swansea Vocabulary Levels Test [7] and the Lexical Frequency Profile [1]. While recognizing that mainstream language curricula tend to favour the integration of vocabulary with skills such as reading, writing, speaking and listening, the above tests, with their emphasis on discrete, context-independent items, may nevertheless contribute to language learning by providing learners with the number of encounters required to commit target words to long-term memory. However, the paper also recognizes that a wider range of assessment types is called for, including embedded and context-dependent tests.