Compiling a Corpus-based Educational Word List for Learners of Japanese

“Basic Vocabulary of 10,000 Words for Reading Japanese Text.”

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to compile a corpus-based educational word list (hereinafter referred to as, “the List”) for learners of Japanese as a foreign language. The List is a receptive vocabulary list used for reading Japanese text. The importance of each word in learning Japanese was quantified by dispersion and utility measurements. The level of each word in the List was determined by its rank for word importance and word-familiarity which indicates the difficulty of the word.

To assess the practicality of the List, a text coverage survey was conducted. It was found that text coverage of the vocabulary in the List was wider for text used by native speakers and text written for Japanese language learners than the JLPT word list.