Measuring the vocabulary size of Muslim pre-university students

The last decade has seen an increased interest in the field of second language vocabulary acquisition (SLVA). The findings in SLVA research point to a need to identify learners’ existing vocabulary size to ensure that they achieved the threshold level of vocabulary. The present study aims to measure the vocabulary size of pre-university students at a public university in Malaysia. The receptive and productive vocabulary size tests were administered to 190 students. The results indicate that these pre-university students have yet to achieve the recommended threshold level of vocabulary that is needed to enable them to successfully acquire vocabulary independently. It was also found that there was a strong relationship (r=0.737) between English language proficiency and vocabulary size, statistically significant at p<0.01 level. Students’ performance in receptive and productive vocabulary was also found to be strongly related (r=0.862), statistically significant at p