From Receptive to Productive Vocabulary: A Study Using Dialog Journals

This study moves toward answering the question of 1) relationships between teacher and student uses of words in dialog journals when the teacher has used the word before the student, and 2) the implications of those relationships on productive vocabulary acquisition. In the study, the dialog journals of a class of high proficiency Chilean students enrolled in the fourth of their five year English teacher training program in Chile were analyzed to find answers to these questions. First, type/token ratios were figured for each student journal entry and compared to previous entries to see if there was an increase in the diversity of productive vocabulary used by the students. Second, the percentage of student words possibly acquired by the students, and the percentage of teacher words possibly acquired by the students were calculated. Finally, vocabulary used by the students in the journals was compared to vocabulary previously used by the teacher in the journals. The results reveal levels of varying clarity of relationships between teacher and student uses of words, including 6 clear patterns that give implications for teaching and creating materials for productive vocabulary acquisition.

Thesis Author: LaPorte, Carrie

Year Completed: 1994

Thesis Chair: Cheryl Brown