Cognates in Vocabulary Size Testing - a Distorting Influence?

The Vocabulary Size Test

Users of the test need to be clear what the test is measuring and not measuring. It is measuring written receptive vocabulary knowledge, that is the vocabulary knowledge required for reading. It is not measuring listening vocabulary size, or the vocabulary knowledge needed for speaking and writing. It is also not a measure of reading skill, because although vocabulary size is a critical factor ...

language learning strategies and vocabulary size of iranian efl learners

learning a second or foreign language requires the manipulation of four main skills, namely, listening, reading, speaking, and writing which lead to effective communication. it is obvious that vocabulary is an indispensible part of any communication, so without a vocabulary, no meaningful communication can take place and meaningful communication relies heavily on vocabulary. one fundamental fac...

Cognates Alignment

Some authors (Simard et al.; Melamed; Danielsson & Mühlenbock) have suggested measures of similarity of words in different languages so as to find extra clues for alignment of parallel texts. Cognate words, like ‘Parliament’ and ‘Parlement’, in English and French respectively, provide extra anchors that help to improve the quality of the alignment. In this paper, we will extend an alignment alg...

Vocabulary size and email authentication

This paper explores the performance of the method proposed by Efron and Thisted to predict vocabulary sizes based on sampled text. The objective of this research is to determine whether this simple and quick test can be used as a coarse indicator of authorship. Three sets of emails, as well as other texts are analyzed in order to collect performance data. The conclusion is that the test is at b...

Distorting Reason