Introduction

The focus of this chapter is on research in second language vocabulary acquisition and use. There are three reasons for reviewing this research in a book on vocabulary assessment. The first is that the researchers are significant users of vocabulary tests as instruments in their studies. In other words, the purpose of vocabulary assessment is not only to make decisions about what individual learners have achieved in a teaching/learning context but also to advance our understanding of the processes of vocabulary acquisition. Secondly, in the absence of much recent interest in vocabulary among language testers, acquisition researchers have often had to deal with assessment issues themselves as they devised the instruments for their research. The third reason is that the results of their research can contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the construct of vocabulary ability, which – as I explained in the previous chapter – is important for the validation of vocabulary tests.

Although the amount of research on second language vocabulary acquisition has increased in recent years, the field has tended to lack coherence. As Meara (1993) pointed out, there have been many one-off studies by researchers who then moved on to other areas; only a handful of scholars have built a sustained record of research on second language vocabulary. I do not attempt to carry out a comprehensive review of the field here (for overviews, see Harley, 1995; Coady and Huckin, 1997; Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997), but rather I have selected four topic areas which have been extensively researched and offer insights on vocabulary assessment.