International Journal of Education

It is widely acknowledged that vocabulary plays a vital part in language acquisition. Vocabulary test has been widely adopted to evaluate learners’ overall language competence and correlation to specific language skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Vocabulary acquisition takes up a big proportion in the whole cycle of language acquisition and learners need to spend much time and energy on it, therefore studies in this field still deserve much attention. As vocabulary is a multi-dimensional construct, test tools and methods are becoming increasingly diversified. The outcome of vocabulary test should be interpreted taking some minor indexes into consideration. Based on studies in the past 20 years, this paper first briefly summarizes their major findings and points out the inadequacies. Then this paper gives a detailed statement of vocabulary test including five aspects: specific indexes of vocabulary size, diachronic and synchronic tests, selection of test items, test methods and units of counting. This paper aims at improving the backwash effect of vocabulary test on vocabulary teaching and raising the efficiency of vocabulary teaching.

Vocabulary test; language competence; learner; language skills