Researching vocabulary through a word knowledge framework: Word associations and verbal suffixes

This study examines how two types of word knowledge, word associa-tions and grammatical suffix knowledge, change over time both re-ceptively and productively. Ninety-five secondary and postsecondary Japanese students were tested on three word associations and inflec-tional and derivational suffixes for each of 20 verbs, once near the beginning of their academic year and once near the end. The results showed their average vocabulary gain was 330 words. The students showed rather poor knowledge of the allowable suffixes for the verbs, especially the derivative suffixes. Likewise, the subjects did not show very good mastery of the verbs ’ word associations. Even for verbs rated as known, the students as a group were able to produce only Research such as the present paper relies on the cooperation of a number of people. We thank the students of Notre Dame Women’s University and Kyoto Nishi High School for their participation and Rob Waring and Renee Hawkins for allowing access to their classes. Stephanie Swoll translated the test instructions into Japanese. A more detailed account of this study can be found in Schmitt (1995b). Norbert Schmitt is completing his Ph.D. studies at the University of Nottingham. His main research interests are L2 vocabulary acquistion and testing. He has recently coedited Vocabularly: Description, Acquisition, an