Tools for Researching Vocabulary

This book introduces an innovative collection of easy-to-use computer programs that have been developed to measure and model vocabulary knowledge. The book aims to help researchers discover new instruments for lexical analysis, and provides a theoretical framework in which studies with such tools could be conducted. Each of the programs comes with a short manual explaining how to use the program, an example of a published paper that uses the program and a set of questions that readers can develop into proper projects. The programs can be used in real research projects and have the potential to break new ground for research in L2 vocabulary acquisition. The book will be of great use to final year undergraduates and masters students in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language testing and to PhD students doing research methods courses.

Paul Meara is Emeritus Professor, Swansea University, UK and a leading scholar in the field of vocabulary acquisition. He has published extensively in this area and has held many positions of responsibility including Chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of Chartered Institute of Linguists in 2010 and was elected to the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2011.

Imma Miralpeix obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona, Spain where she is Lecturer and Researcher. Her main research interests include second language vocabulary acquisition, especially lexical development and assessment, and multilingualism. She is the author of several publications in these areas and has taken part in different funded projects on second language learning and teaching.