| Author: | To, Sin Kan Candice |
| Title: | A review of HKDSE reading assessment : the alignment between vocabulary items used and "wordlists for the English language curriculum" |
| Advisors: | Lam, Phoenix (ENGL) |
| Degree: | DALS |
| Year: | 2022 |
| Subject: | English language -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- China -- Hong Kong Education, Secondary -- China -- Hong Kong -- Examinations Vocabulary -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- China -- Hong Kong Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Faculty of Humanities |
| Pages: | ix, 214 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Reading comprehension is a vital skill one should possess to process and construct the meaning of a text, which is also crucial for further learning and employment (Moore, McClelland, Alef, & Vogel, 2016). In the context of Hong Kong, learners’ English reading proficiency can be determined through the English Language Paper 1 Reading of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE), an internationally recognized and standardized university entrance examination. Although it is widely believed that having a good grasp of vocabulary is of paramount importance for reading comprehension, studies have shown that Hong Kong students have a relatively limited vocabulary size (Fan, 2000; Tang, 2007). In the hopes of addressing the pressing need to enhance local learners’ vocabulary growth, the Education Bureau (EBD) has assembled a set of vocabulary curriculum wordlists called “Wordlists for the English Language Curriculum”, to give both teachers and learners a general direction and indication to what and how many words students should know by the end of each key educational stage or year level. This methodology is widely adopted in vocabulary teaching because it can promote vocabulary development in a time-efficient manner. Considering vocabulary as the key influence factor of reading performance, this study aims to reveal the expectations of the HKDSE by examining the frequency of vocabulary used in the English Language Reading Paper. In addition, the study evaluates the representativeness of the “Wordlists for the English Language Curriculum”, suggests whether refinement of the lexical items therein is necessary, and illustrates test takers’ cognitive processes while completing reading tasks that involve unknown vocabulary items to help us understand students’ use of reading comprehension strategies to construct meaning from text. This study focuses on examining the reading passages of the HKDSE English Language Reading Paper 2016-2020 to determine the vocabulary size necessary to reach 95% and 98% lexical coverage; the former enables a basic understanding of the text, while the latter ensures a full understanding. Findings regarding lexical coverage have been generated using the “Vocabprofile” function on Compleat Lexical Tutor v.8.3. This study has also measured to what extent these vocabulary items in the reading texts are in line with the prescribed wordlists developed by EDB using a text comparison analysis. Finally, after identifying the missing words from the EDB suggested wordlists, 10 students have been invited to participate in a think-aloud interview to understand how they react to these unfamiliar words during reading comprehension. The results based on analysing all 15 HKDSE English Language Reader Paper reading sets of 2016-2020 show that a vocabulary knowledge of the most frequent 6k and 8k word families can provide 95% and 98% lexical coverage respectively. Furthermore, the comparison analysis shows that, on average, 97.3% of the words in the HKDSE English Language Reader Paper reading sets fall into the curriculum wordlists. In addition, the think-aloud interview findings indicate a connection between vocabulary size and reading performance while highlighting other external factors such as readers’ prior knowledge. Overall, the findings of this study can provide valuable insight into the kinds of vocabulary used in the context of an assessment, reflect the target language needs of exam takers and serve as a reference guide for the design of teaching materials, thereby facilitating the work of textbook publishers as well as other relevant practitioners of the education industry. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7067.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.13 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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