Evaluating Evidence for the Reliability and Validity of Lexical Diversity Indices in L2 Oral Task Responses

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Evaluating Evidence for the Reliability and Validity of Lexical Diversity Indices in L2 Oral Task Responses
Language: English
Authors: Kristopher Kyle (ORCID 0000-0001-5415-9672), Hakyung Sung, Masaki Eguchi (ORCID 0000-0002-0791-4935), Fred Zenker (ORCID 0000-0002-1620-6690)
Source: Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 2024 46(1):278-299.
Availability: Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 22
Publication Date: 2024
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Oral Language, Validity, Reliability, Language Proficiency, Vocabulary Skills, Task Analysis, Speech Communication, Computational Linguistics, Written Language, Scores, Correlation, Indexes
DOI: 10.1017/S0272263123000402
ISSN: 0272-2631
1470-1545
Abstract: Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical diversity such as Root TTR (Guiraud's index) and D (vocd-D and HD-D) that have been preliminarily shown to lack reliability in spoken L2 contexts and/or have been consistently shown to lack reliability in written L2 contexts. In this study, we empirically evaluate lexical diversity indices with respect to two aspects of reliability (text-length independence and across-task stability) and one aspect of validity (relationship with proficiency scores). The results indicated that neither Root TTR nor D is reliable across different text lengths. However, support for the reliability and validity of optimized versions of MATTR and MTLD was found.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2024
Accession Number: EJ1438127
Database: ERIC
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