Author Information

Mengyuan WangFollow

Department

Faculty of Education

Program

TESOL

Year

1

Abstract Text

For ESL teachers, one of most important jobs is to choose appropriate materials for their students. However, some teachers may not know how to identify appropriate materials. Lexical coverage can provide some indication of the appropriacy of materials. Lexical coverage refers to the percentage of known words in a text. A context with low lexical coverage may not be appropriate for learning because students may not understand it. Nation (2006) stated that knowing 98% of words in a text may be ideal for adequate comprehension and therefore the material that teachers choose for students should include 98% of known words. Teachers can use the Vocabulary Level Test (Webb, Sasao, & Ballance, 2017) to determine the amount of words that students have mastered and analyze materials using a lexical profiler. A lexical profiler is a tool that can help teachers to identify the frequency of each word in text. It is easy to use and reveals the proportion of words in each word frequency level. Based on students’ vocabulary level and the results of a vocabulary profiler, teachers can determine whether their materials are likely to be understood by students. This talk will explain how to use each of these tools and show how they can be used to find appropriate materials for students.

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Identifying appropriate materials for English language learners

For ESL teachers, one of most important jobs is to choose appropriate materials for their students. However, some teachers may not know how to identify appropriate materials. Lexical coverage can provide some indication of the appropriacy of materials. Lexical coverage refers to the percentage of known words in a text. A context with low lexical coverage may not be appropriate for learning because students may not understand it. Nation (2006) stated that knowing 98% of words in a text may be ideal for adequate comprehension and therefore the material that teachers choose for students should include 98% of known words. Teachers can use the Vocabulary Level Test (Webb, Sasao, & Ballance, 2017) to determine the amount of words that students have mastered and analyze materials using a lexical profiler. A lexical profiler is a tool that can help teachers to identify the frequency of each word in text. It is easy to use and reveals the proportion of words in each word frequency level. Based on students’ vocabulary level and the results of a vocabulary profiler, teachers can determine whether their materials are likely to be understood by students. This talk will explain how to use each of these tools and show how they can be used to find appropriate materials for students.