A corpus study of English language exam texts: vocabulary difficulty and the impact on students’ wider reading (or should students be reading more texts by dead white men?)

Jennings, B., Powell, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3607-2407, Jaworska, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7465-2245 and Joseph, H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4325-4628 (2024) A corpus study of English language exam texts: vocabulary difficulty and the impact on students’ wider reading (or should students be reading more texts by dead white men?). Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 67 (5). pp. 303-316. ISSN 1936-2706 doi: 10.1002/jaal.1331

Abstract/Summary

Students in England sit an important gateway examination in English at age 16. Major changes were made to this exam in 2017 resulting in more emphasis on the comprehension of unseen literary texts. This paper uses corpus linguistics methods to identify the kind of vocabulary encountered in these exam texts and compares it to vocabulary encountered in other sources of written language (classic literary fiction, biographies, poetry etc.). Results showed vocabulary in the exam texts was typically low in frequency and that older literary fiction texts contained similar types of vocabulary. This suggests that students and teachers should rely more on older literary fiction to best prepare for the exam. However, this raises ethical questions about whether an exam should dictate students’ reading experience, especially when older literary fiction is likely to be less diverse and dominated by Dead White men.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/114829
Identification Number/DOI	10.1002/jaal.1331
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Institute of Education > Language and Literacy in Education
Publisher	International Literacy Association
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item