Effects of Two Types of Vocabulary Practice: Receptive and Productive

The study investigates the effects of two different types of vocabulary practice on Korean college students' productive vocabulary in English writing: receptive vocabulary practice and productive vocabulary practice. One group of students received vocabulary instruction and practiced vocabulary in the form of cloze tests without writing practice. The order group produced English writing without vocabulary instruction over a semester. Vocabulary changes in free writing and summary writing were analyzed by the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) for both groups. The results show that the receptive vocabulary practice did not lead to vocabulary growth in free writing and summary writing in terms of LFP improvement, but the productive vocabulary practice resulted in improved LFP in summary writing. The findings indicate that L2 learners' receptive vocabulary does not easily transfer into productive vocabulary in student subsequent writing even though the productive vocabulary practice alone may not be effective enough to improve L2 learners' productive vocabulary in writing, it is suggested that L2 writing teachers should devise more aggressive and effective ways of activating learners' productive vocabulary to improve their students' written production.