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

该项目将采用斯旺西的词汇量测试来衡量格兰奇初中年轻学习者的词汇量。它将测量分数的变化，这是教育表现变化的基础，并确定区分高表现学习者和低表现学习者的词汇项目。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年里是否减少了。如果孩子使用的单词的数量和范围，尤其是不常见的单词，随着时间的推移而减少，那么这将支持整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.