Session 4

Author

Masaki EGUCHI, Ph.D.

Modified

August 3, 2025

One-liner

We will overview the history and current state of lexical measurements.

🎯 Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, students will be able to:

  • Explain the purposes of linguistic measures
  • List commonly used lexical measures in second language acquisition research
  • Explain sub-constructs of lexical richness measures
    • Lexical Diversity
    • Lexical Sophistication

🔑 Key Concepts

  • Lexical Richness
    • Distinction between text internal vs external measures
  • Lexical Diversity
    • Type-Token Ratio
    • Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity (MTLD)
  • Lexical Sophistication
    • Frequency
    • Concreteness
    • Phonological neighbors

📚 Required Readings

  • Durrant Ch. 3
  • (Skim) Eguchi, M., & Kyle, K. (2020). Continuing to Explore the Multidimensional Nature of Lexical Sophistication: The Case of Oral Proficiency Interviews. The Modern Language Journal, 104(2), 381–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12637

Materials

Slides for the session

Reflection