What Percentage of English Words You Receptively Know Can You Spell Out Correctly?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate what percentage of English words known receptively Japanese learners of English at senior high school can spell out correctly. Two kinds of tests were prepared: one is to measure receptive knowledge of vocabulary (R) and the other is to measure productive knowledge of vocabulary (P). The receptive test was designed to investigate whether an examinee knows the meaning of each word. The productive test was designed to investigate whether not only an examinee can produce each word but also can spell it out perfectly. All the target words were the same in the receptive test and in the productive test. The target words in the tests were decided, considering parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), lengths (number of alphabets), frequencies of each word. Fifty-six first-year senior high school students took the receptive test, first; and then, approximately ten days later, they also took the productive test. The results showed (1) according to the overall estimation through all the subjects, the productive knowledge 〓 vocabulary was 39.8% of receptive one, (2) the ratio of R[+]&P[+] : R[+]&P[-] : R[-]&P[+] was 0.375 : 0.608 : 0.016, and that (3) the ratios of R[+]&P[+] : R[+]&P[-] : R[-]&P[+] might be different according to the differences of subjects' English proficiency levels, parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), lengths (number of alphabets), and word-frequency levels of each word.