Developing a Japanese Vocabulary Levels Test for the purposes of extensive reading

Abstract

When assessing L2 English learner vocabulary to guide learners to an appropriate reading level, teachers and researchers typically focus on highly frequent words determined by analyses of L1 English corpora. This does not yet appear to be the case for Japanese, with teachers and researchers either focussed on textbook or Japanese proficiency test vocabulary lists to determine learner vocabulary knowledge. This may be due to the lack of vocabulary tests based on Japanese word frequency. In order to partially address this gap, this paper reports the creation of a vocabulary levels test based on Matsushita’s (2012a) General Learners’ Vocabulary List. The first iteration, developed in 2017, covered only the first 2000 words, and was found to assess too few words to be suitable for L2 Japanese learners. The current version was therefore expanded to cover the 5000 most frequent Japanese words. Four test forms were created, which have been used with second- and third-year learners at a large New Zealand university. The test was found to be highly reliable (Kuder-Richardson 21 = .98), and arguments are presented here for its validity in the L2 Japanese extensive reading context.