Defining and measuring the vocabulary gap in school-age speakers of English

该项目将修改斯旺西的词汇量测试，以衡量格兰奇初中年轻学习者的词汇量。它将衡量教育表现差异背后的分数差异，并确定区分表现优秀和表现不佳的学习者的词条。它将使用OUP的学习者语料库和词汇复杂程度的变化来检查词汇知识在过去20年中是否有所减少。如果儿童使用的单词的数量和范围，特别是不常用的单词，随着时间的推移而减少，那么这将支持总体词汇知识也在减少的假设。

The project will adapt Swansea's vocabulary size tests to measure the vocabulary size of young learners in Grange Junior School. It will measure the variation in scores which underlies variation in educational performance, and identify lexical items that distinguish high performing learners from low performing learners. It will use OUP's Learner Corpus, and changes in lexical sophistication, to examine whether lexical knowledge has diminished over the last 20 years. If the number and range of words used by children, especially infrequent words, is diminishing over time then this will support the hypothesis that overall vocabulary knowledge is also diminishing.