Building a lexical syllabus on Moodle with web concordancers for EFL productive academic vocabulary Ming-Chia Lin () National

Taiwan Normal University ABTRACT A rich repertoire of productive academic vocabulary is one of the crucial constructs for L2 academic writing quality, as this lexical ability enables the L2 learners to express their ideas specifically and then to clarify their writing effectively (Hyland, 2007; Lee & Muncie, 2006; Nation, 2001). To expand L2 productive vocabulary, corpus-based referencing tools, such as concordancers, have been considered fairly powerful in providing the direct access to authentic contextualized language usage (Johns, 1994). Little research, however, has investigated the extent to which the explicit lexical instruction with web-referencing tools can enhance productive vocabulary learning for academic writing. The study explores the efficacy of a self-designed online lexical syllabus on twenty-five EFL college learners academic vocabulary and writing abilities. With the Academic Word List (the AWL, Coxhead, 2000), a two-month lexical syllabus (http://formoosa.fl.nthu.edu.tw/moodle2/) was constructed on MOODLE with the hyperlinks of concordancers and the AWL Highlighter (to underscore the AWL items for an inserted text). Three major course features included: (a) AWL lessons (explicitly addressing the selected AWL in reading-to write tasks) (b) AWL quizzes, and (c) learners e-portfolios of weekly writing and lexical entries. For assessment, two standardized vocabulary tests (tapping the passive and productive academic vocabulary) and one timed-essay test were given in pretest and posttest. The essay test using one identical prompt throughout three tests was re-administered in a four-week-after delayed posttest. Learners attitudes toward the online syllabus were elicited by a questionnaire. To uncover the usefulness of the online syllabus, the vocabulary test scores will be compared statistically. Three batches of essay tests will be evaluated by the VocabProfile (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/, to reveal the density of learners productive vocabulary), and an analytical writing rubric. Also correlations between the learners lexical and writing abilities will be computed. Results and implications will be reported in the conference. 100-Word ABTRACT The study explores the efficacy of a self-designed online lexical syllabus on twenty-five EFL college learners academic vocabulary and writing abilities. With the Academic Word List (the AWL, Coxhead, 2000), a two-month lexical syllabus (http://formoosa.fl.nthu.edu.tw/moodle2/) was constructed on MOODLE, with hyperlinks of concordancers and the AWL Highlighter. Three major course features included: (a) AWL lessons (b) AWL quizzes, and (c) learners e-portfolios. Two standardized vocabulary tests and one timed-essay test were given in pretest and posttest; the essay test was re-administered in a four-week-after delayed posttest. Learners attitudes toward the syllabus were elicited by a questionnaire. Findings will be reported. INTRODUCTION The explicit instruction on EFL vocabulary for writing Vocabulary research has attracted increasingly attention in the language teaching field since lexis is recognized as a vital factor for EFL literacy development (Coxhead, 2006; Horst et al., 2005; Lee & Munice, 2006; Nation, 2001). That is, L2 learners lexical knowledge may determine the quality of their reading comprehension and writing performance. To foster EFL learners lexical development, embedding vocabulary learning within reading tasks is a common practice, as the
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powerful effects of learning words incidentally through graded readers have been widely documented (e.g., Huang, C. C., 2004; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000). Yet, word gains through incidental learning can be fragile; thus, explicit vocabulary instruction comes into play. The explicit lexical instruction is defined as treating EFL vocabulary to be a specific target in language instruction rather than a by-product of L2 reading or listening tasks (Folse, 2004; Lee, 2003). Namely, the explicit lexical instruction aims to direct learners focal attention to their vocabulary learning, and to equip them with instrumental lexical learning strategies (Hulstijn, 2001). It is further suggested that the explicit lexical instruction may comprise both intentional learning and incidental learning. The former denotes that learners devote their attention to vocabulary learning through the overt lexical curriculum, whereas incidental learning indicates that learners process and retain words implicitly when they involve in other language tasks, such as reading, speaking or writing exercises (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001). Yet, it remains unclear whether direct vocabulary instruction can lead to active use of words in writing. With the belief of the potentials of direct lexical instruction on writing, S. L. Lee (2003) instructed thirty-six target words in the reading text to probe whether the recognized and newly learned vocabulary in a reading text can be converted into productive use, and the retention rate of the learned words. Sixty-five ESL intermediate learners in Vancouver (ranging from grade 8 to 11) were administered a vocabulary test and three timed-essay tests (pretest, posttest, delayed posttest). After a receptive vocabulary test, reading instruction that focused on reading comprehension was delivered, followed by the essaywriting pretest to gauge learners productive vocabulary before any lexical instruction. Then, multimode lexical instruction (35 minutes) providing the input and output visually or aurally was delivered to address the aspects of form, meaning, and use of the target words. Finally, the learners productive vocabulary in the three essay tests was analyzed by the Lexical Frequency Profile (the LFP, developed by Nation & Laufer, 1995) to reveal the ratio of the general and academic words used in the learners essays. By the LFP, the rate of the usage of the instructed words was compared across the three time points. No significant loss was found for the recognized vocabulary for the productive use of in a delayed writing task, while the newly learned vocabulary appeared to decline drastically. Thus, it is clarified that learners do not automatically transfer their recognition vocabulary into productive use through reading comprehension tasks, yet the direct lexical instruction that combines the reading-to-write practices can evidently facilitate their lexical transfer. Conzett (2000) reported that when an integrated course of reading and writing is taught, teachers can assign writing tasks based on readings, so that learners can review the reading texts in terms of the collocations and expressions relevant to the topic, and then extends the vocabulary knowledge into their own writings. It is recommended that language teachers may supply students with some background reading and focus on the academic vocabulary in context (Coxhead, 2006, p. 120), so that learners will have opportunities of using the target words in the process of drafting and revising their written work. With the same interest in the ESL intermediate students vocabulary acquisition, Lee and Munice (2006) gave an explicit lexical lesson to their ESL students and
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assigned some reading-to-write tasks for productive use of the target words. It was found that the instruction did expand the learners vocabulary in writing. Compared with previous investigation on adolescent learners (S. L. Lee, 2003; Lee & Munice, 2006), however, the effects of explicit lexical instruction on academic writing for college learners, appears to be less addressed. In the pursuit of college or postgraduate education, academic vocabulary is a crucial index for L2 learners to master in order to familiarize themselves with genres and styles of academic discourse (Coxhead, 2000; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000). Among the diverse versions of the academic vocabulary, the Academic Word List (the AWL) is recognized as the one of the most profitable word lists. Being an updated version of the University Word List (UWL) designed by Xue and Nation (1984), the AWL consists of a smaller list of higher coverage of academic texts as the corpus, applicable to a wider range of subject areas (Coxhead, 2000). With 570 word families, the AWL has around 10% occurrences of the total words in written academic discourse (Coxhead, 2000). It is suggested that by learning the high-frequency lexemes in the academic discourse, the learners can develop their academic literacy more efficiently (Coxhead, 2000, 2006; Horst et al., 2005; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; Nation, 2001, 2004). As advocated by Folse (2004) widely used word lists, usually targeting ESL students seeking to complete their tertiary studies in English (p. 41) can be motivating to learners. In accordance with explicit vocabulary instruction, the legitimacy of addressing the various aspects of word knowledge (i.e. spelling, meaning, collocation, etc.) and fostering learners independent lexical learning strategy have been well-supported (Coxhead, 2006; Lee, S. L., 2003; Nation, 2001, 2004). Schmitt (2000) manifests the usefulness of explicit instruction with a number of principles: providing the repeated exposure to a word to foster the mastery command of the target word, applying the versatile instructional techniques to assist learners to create multiple links to the word, and encouraging learners to be autonomous learners by introducing the various strategies for independent vocabulary learning. In short, providing repeated exposure to the target words and equipping the L2 advanced learners with independent learning strategies seem to be two crucial concerns for the efficient lexical instruction. Applications of the corpus-based referencing tool for lexical learning Meanwhile, the CALL applications may fulfill the lexical learning principles of providing repeated lexical input and autonomous learning strategies with greater ease. Particular for intermediate or advanced learners, they need to be able to monitor their own lexical learning, and to advance their proficiency levels autonomously. That is, the learners need to be capable of independently analyzing authentic language data and deciding how and what to internalize. Exploiting the findings of corpus linguistics to develop web concordances and dictionaries is one of the widespread practices for lexical learning, as the corpus-based referencing tools empowers each individual learner to have self-access to the rich and authentic lexical usage (Lee, C. Y. 2001; Liou, 2006; Mudraya, 2006; Schmitt, 2000). Supplying the abundant corpus input, the online dictionaries
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present the informative linguistic data for word entries including the definitions, collocates, and example sentences (Schmitt, 2000). 1A concordancer enables learners to enter a key word or phrase in the search of the frequent collocates, and then it displays a list of sentence examples with discourse information. Lee (2001) thus summarized three merits of using concordancers in language learning: supplying large amount of authentic language, providing access to discovery learning, and promoting learner autonomy. With the proper applications of web dictionaries and concordancers, L2 learners can benefit from the multiple exposures to living language data in the target language. Thus, it may cultivate their language intuitions to the L2 use in the discourse, contribute to greater lexical growth, and foster their autonomy as an independent language learner. Some researchers have reported the efficiency and accuracy of e-referencing tools such as the web concordancers or dictionaries in teaching the productive use of vocabulary (Cobb, 1999; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; C. Y. Lee, 2001). Both Cobb (1999) and Kaur and Hegelheimer (2005) compared the usefulness of concordancers and dictionaries in expanding college learners receptive vocabulary into productive use. In Cobbs studies (1999), the experimental group (supplied with a concordancer) demonstrated better abilities of transferring their word knowledge to a gap-filling task in a novel text, and appeared to retain their definitional knowledge longer. Meanwhile, Kaur and Hegelheimer (2004) further investigated two aspects of productive use of vocabulary knowledge: the accuracy rate of using academic words in vocabulary tasks (cloze and sentence-building), and the degree of transferring productive vocabulary into a take-home essay. In both tasks, the experimental group (n=9) outperformed the control group (n=9) only with an online dictionary as the tool. The great differences between the two groups were also found in the essay writing task regarding the willingness of trying the newly learned words (unsuccessful trials with the learned words) and accuracy of lexical usage. It is supported that using concordancers can essentially enhance the accuracy and confidence of learners productive vocabulary. To enhance the learners productive vocabulary for writing, two key principles for the lexical instructional practices are suggested by the current vocabulary studies: offering the explicit lexical instruction with the literacy practices (connecting the reading and writing tasks) that enables learners to stretch their lexical muscles productively, and equipping learners with independent learning strategies through the powerful Internet referencing resources. This may efficiently facilitate the developments of learners lexical behaviors. Little research, however, has explored the extent to which the explicit lexical lessons can assist the advanced learners to enlarge their productive academic vocabulary. The study aims to investigate the efficacy of an Internet-mediated lexical syllabus in fostering EFL learners vocabulary and writing abilities. Three research questions were raised as follows: 1. Do EFL learners expand the range and increase the accuracy rate of academic vocabulary in writing via the online lexical instruction? 2. Do EFL improve their writing quality after the online instruction? What are the
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[A] concordancer is a computer program which is able to retrieve from a corpus of texts all the occurrences of a particular lexical item and to present them in a way which may make patterns more recognizable (C. Y. Lee, 2001, p. 4).

correlations btw vocabulary and writing quality? 3. What are learners attitudes towards the design and the effectiveness of the online instruction on their academic vocabulary learning and essay writing?

METHOD Based on the Academic Word List (AWL, Coxhead, 2000), an eight-week online academic vocabulary syllabus was developed for 25 third-year college students of English majors in a pubic university of northern Taiwan. They enrolled in a required course, Reading and Writing II, with 100 minutes per week. During the 8-week instructional treatment, the class started with explicit lexical teaching, followed by article reading and essay writing. The online instructional materials and referencing tools: On the basis of the academic word list, the online instructional materials were constructed on a free course management system (MOODLE, http://formoosa.fl.nthu.edu.tw/moodle2/). Given the frequency-based teaching principle, the AWL will be taught from the most frequently used words (from sublist 1 to sublist 8) to maximize the usefulness of these target words. The online lexical syllabus is designed with five major features (See Figure 1): (a) preliminary advices on vocabulary learning; (b) the explicit academic word lessons; (c) online practice for the lexical knowledge through various quizzes, ie. gap-filling, crossword, etc. ; (d) downloadable resources for academic word learning and weekly lecture notes (e) student assignments section. Also a textbook designed for the Academic Word List was employed as the main resources for reading texts (Huntley, 2006). Figure 1 The overview of the online instructional materials

Some dynamic online tools were adopted: the web concordancer, and the AWL highlighter. A corpus-based concordance, TANGO (http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/collocation), was adopted, as it can deduce collocational patterns in a frequency-based order for the users (See Figure 2). That is, the inquiry outcomes will be arranged by a set of the collocations traits according to the frequency of their occurrences, and then more detailed discourse information for each collocation will be available. This may serve as a powerful framework for beginning users to interpret and utilize the concordancing results efficiently. The user first needs to enter the key word, and choose a corpus,
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and then select a collocation type (ie. VN-verb and noun, or AN-adjective and noun collocations), and a list of possible collocations will be shown. For the AWL Highlighter, the user can enter the texts, and choose the sublist that they wish to inquire (See Figure 3). This may raise their awareness of the importance of the academic words in the discourse. Figure 2 Outcome of collocational traits at the TANGO concordancer

Figure 3 The AWL Highlighter

The teaching procedures During the 8-week instruction, the teacher-investigator taught for the first five weeks, while the learners co-taught for the other three weeks by collaborative work. By gradually empowering the learners control over their own learning, the AWL instruction shifted from the teacher-centered to teacher as facilitator, and to learner-centered regarding the degree of teacher and student involvement in lexical instruction according to Brandles categorization for the language lesson designs of integrating Internet-based resources (2002, p. 89). Moreover, in the first class, an orientation was given to introduce the overview of the course website, the nature of the AWL, the aspects of word learning, and the use of online tools, particular for concordancing. By means of raising learners awareness about the AWL learning and equipping them with the powerful e-referencing tools, it is hoped that learners will gradually become an independent and active AWL learners. Lectures in each week addressed a sublist of the AWL, so eight sublists were covered throughout the instruction. A regular teaching flow included: (a) highlighting the weekly words through the reading input (b) targeting the collocational patterns by hands-on concordancing, and (c) applying the target words to writing via pair work. First, the target words for each lesson were demonstrated to the learners explicitly, and then a reading text taken from the textbook (Huntley, 2006) was distributed with the targeted words highlighted in boldface, and comprehension questions
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for reading were offered as the topic for peer discussions. Then, 10 target words selected from the reading input were given to learners to inquire the collocational patterns by pair work (5 words for the individual search). Finally, a pair writing task whose topic was related to the reading input was delivered with the requirements of using the previous 10 target words. Being assigned a weekly individual vocabulary log of 5 word entries and 3 points of learning reflection, learners were urged to exploit their academic words actively and to monitor their own lexical learning independently. Data collection Two types of instruments including vocabulary tests, an essay prompt, and questionnaires were used to assess the instructional efficacy within three time periods: pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest (only the essay test delivered). For the vocabulary tests, the receptive version of Vocabulary Level Test (VLT) of academic word (Schmitt, 2001), and the adapted version of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS, Wesche & Paribakht, 1996) created by Joe (1998) were administered together, and the learners needed to complete two tests within 60 minutes (See Appendix A for a sample). The VLT itself contained 30 test items with no contextual clues, which required the test-takers to select three words out of six to match the corresponding definitions. For the VKS measure, fifteen words that would be addressed in the instruction were randomly selected from the AWL. They were two words from the target eight sublists respectively, but only one item chosen from the final sublist (sublist 8) that was the less frequently used list in our lexical instruction. The test takers needed to demonstrate their self-reported and the actual performance (writing a meaning and example sentence for the target words) of the lexical knowledge on these 15 target words, and the scoring would focus on the correspondence of learners two types of output based on Joes (1998) criteria (See appendix B for a sample). To ensure the accuracy of learners lexical productive output in the VKS, two raters were recruited. For the essay test, an identical essay prompt was used throughout the pretest, posttest, and four-week-after delayed posttest. With a writing prompt, the learners were required to describe one of their purchase decisions, and to incorporate as many AWL items as possible. Three batches of essay tests were then rated by the ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs, Zinkgraf, Wormuth, Harfiel, & Hughey, 1981). Also, the uses of AWL items in essays were examined by the VocabProfile (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/) to reveal the density of learners productive vocabulary. Finally, the evaluation questionnaire was distributed to probe learners perception about vocabulary learning. It evaluated the learners perspectives about the effectiveness of the online lexical instruction.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Via one-tailed Paired T-test, comparisons of the pretest and the post-instructional performance on the vocabulary size and depth tests were made and shown in Table 1 and Table 2. As the
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responses of the VKS require test-takers to make sentences using the target words, two raters were involved to make a judgment. One was the research-investigator herself, and the other one was a third-year graduate student. The inter-rater consistency of their assessment on the VKS responses, calculated by the Cronbach Alpha, was fairly satisfactory for both tests: .9998 for the pretest, and .9986 the pretest. For the results of the t-test, only the depth vocabulary test (the VKS) reaches a significant difference, while the learners lexical development in the size test (the VLT) is statistically insignificant. To answer the first research question, the lexical instruction appears to be partly instrumental in extending the depth but not the size of learners academic vocabulary. This implied that after the instruction, the learners made some progress and demonstrated less variation (smaller SD) on their lexical depth knowledge, whereas the changes of learners lexical size appeared to be less noticeable. It may be attributed to the high scores of lexical size in the pretest (mean= 57.44 out of 60). That is, before the instruction learners had already had the capabilities of recognizing the meanings of the sampled academic words, while their abilities of accurately using the academic words in sentences appeared to be less adequate (mean=69.48 out of 90). The baseline of our learners lexical abilities may provide some indirect evidence for Laufer and Goldsteins (2004) claim that recognition of word meanings tend to be acquired earlier than the recall of the word forms (either providing an L1 equivalent translation or an L2 target word). With the diagnostic indication of learners prior vocabulary knowledge, the lexical instruction thus focused on the usage of the target words, as our final goal aims to expand learners free active use of vocabulary in academic writing (Laufer, 1998). We delivered the explicit lexical lessons that provided the dictionary-based definitions and grammar features of the target words, and offered powerful corpus-based referencing tools that allow learners to explore the authentic word usage. Thus, the learners were assisted to acquire the grammatical constraints and collocation patterns of target words, and then they were required to apply their productive lexical knowledge in sentence-making or essay-writing tasks. In addition to the improved VKS scores, the quality of written sentences in VKS was assessed qualitatively in order to provide another piece of evidence for the lexical development. In the posttest, the learners tended to employ more vivid sentences compared with the pretest. For example, a student wrote a sentence on the word of via in the pretest with a simple sentence I flew to America via Japan. She later expanded her sentence in a more complex structure He transfers his plane via Hong Kong before he arrives his destination. Another student wrote a sentence for the word phenomenon in the pretest: earthquakes and tornados are natural phenomena. And she expanded the expressions in the posttest In the past people did not know that sun eclipse is just a natural phenomenon and took it as a curse from God. The learners appear to show more willingness of incorporating the target words in more complex sentence structures and involving more vivid meanings. This can be attributed to the benefits of using concordancers that encourages learners to be more willing to experiment with their newly acquired productive vocabulary (Cobb, 1999; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2004).
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Table 1 Results of t-test on the VLT test at two time points

N=25 Lexical Size VLT P>0.05. Pretest (full score=60) mean 57.44 SD 4.3787 Posttest (full score=60) Mean 58.08 SD 4.4527 -1.154 t-test

Table 2 Results of t-test on the VKS test at two time points

N=25 Lexical Depth VKS *P=0.000<0.05. Pretest (full score=90) Mean 69.96 SD 10.7712 Posttest (full score=90) mean 81.3 SD 7.2529 *-8.7561 t-test

In response to the second question, detailed analyses on the learners three essay tests are reported. The three batches of the learners essay tests were carefully evaluated by the LFP and the ESL Composition Profile, so that the interrelations between the learners AWL use and their overall writing quality could be revealed. With the outcome of LFP, the ratios of the four wordlists (1000, 2000, AWL, and the offlist words) across the three writing tests were computed by the descriptive statistics. The total running words for three writing versions are: 7625 words for Version 1 (the writing pretest), 10529 for Version 2 (the posttest), and 10084 for Version 3 (the delayed posttest). And the means of word families across the three test versions were found to be increasing (shown in Table 3). That is, the learners wrote the shortest essays in Version 1 (122.68), and they included more words in Version 2 (157.36); finally they used most words in Version 3 (158.64). Among the variations of the LFP ratios, only the AWL ratio increased from the Versions 1 (mean==2.60%, the range of academic word type=1-11) to 2 (mean=4.99%, the range=2-35), whereas the ratios of the other three word lists decreased from Versions 1 to 2, as the LFP showed an interdependent ratio of the word use in writing. From Versions 2 to 3, the ratios of the 2000 word-level, the AWL, and the offlist all declined, and the AWL showed the smallest decline (Version 3, mean=4.71%, the range=1-34). However, the ratio of the 1000-word-level rose slightly. Table 3 The descriptive statistics of the four word lists of three writing tests
Essay Version N Total Running Words Mean of Word Family K1 (%) SD K2 (%) SD AWL (%) SD Offlist (%) SD

V1 V2 V3

25 25 25

7652 10529 10084

122.68 157.36 158.64

85.05 83.37 84.48

0.040 0.045 0.037

7.55 0.023 2.60 7.20 0.032 4.99 6.74 0.019 4.71

9

0.017 0.025 0.024

4.80 4.44 4.07

0.024 0.022 0.020

To explore the interrelations between the learners vocabulary and writing ability, a correlation matrix was computed (See Table 4). For the total scores, all of the learners received higher scores in Version 2 (posttest mean=80.64/100.00) than in Version 1 (pretest M=68.88), and their scores in Version 3 (delayed posttest M=80.14) slightly declined from Version 2, but those were still higher than Version 1, and the differences among the three versions were significant (p=0.000< 0.005). For the four sub-scores (except for those of mechanics), the variation tendency was similar to that of total scores: the highest scores in Version 2, the second in Version 3. The sub-score of mechanics showed the lowest score in Version 3 and the highest score in Version 2. Generally, the scores in Version 1 were significantly inferior to those in Versions 2 and 3. The discrepancies between Versions 1 and 2 were higher than those between Version 2 and 3. After the instruction, the learners showed the greatest progress on the constructs of Content, Organization, Vocabulary, and Language Use, but this progress decreased slightly in Version 3.

Table 4 Results on the rating of three writing tests

Word Band Total scores Tests V1 V2 V3 Content V1 V2 V3 Organization V1 V2 V3 Vocabulary V1 V2 V3 Language Use V1 V2 V3 Mechanics V1 V2 V3 Mean 68.88 80.64 80.14 21.60 24.88 23.90 13.72 16.32 15.84 12.96 16.22 15.84 16.38 19.72 19.76 4.18 4.24 4.04 SD 3.571 5.718 5.338 1.323 1.219 1.331 1.251 0.945 1.248 0.889 1.444 1.048 1.063 2.006 1.843 0.675 0.561 0.644

A correlation matrix was constructed in exploring the degree of correlations between the total scores and five sub-scores across the three versions (See Table 5). The results reveal that all the
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sub-scores, except those of Mechanics, were all shown to be highly correlated to the total scores with higher than 0.5 correlations. In Version 1, the four sub-scores (Mechanics excluded) were discovered to have about .55 correlations with the total scores, and the sub-scores of Content had the highest correlation of .81. In Version 2, the four sub-scores were discovered to have about .75 correlations with the total scores, and the sub-scores of Vocabulary had the highest correlation of .92, while the sub-scores of Language Use also had .91 correlation. In Version 3, the four sub-scores were found to have about .75 correlations, and the sub-scores of Vocabulary had the highest correlation of .92, while the sub-scores of Language Use had .87. The data imply that in Version 1, the sub-score of Content predict the learners writing performance most efficiently, whereas in Versions 2 and 3, the strongest predictors become the sub-scores of Vocabulary and Language Use. The shift of the strongest predictors of the learners writing quality may be attributed to our research design. With an identical writing prompt throughout three versions, the content and organization of the learners three essays were controlled to some degree, as they may simply revise their previous essay version in Versions 2 and 3, rather than composing a new article. Meanwhile, the explicit lexical instruction was delivered to draw the learners attention to the productive uses of the target academic words. In this way, the learners may gradually acquire the ability to use the academic words more appropriately and accurately in writing. As clarity of the learners academic writing may be improved, the overall writing quality may be subsequently upgraded.

Table 5 Correlation matrix of total and sub-scores of three writing tests Total score /Sub-score T1 T2 T3 Content C1 C2 C3 0.81* 0.76* 0.74* Organization O1 O2 O3 0.69* 0.73* 0.79* Vocabulary V1 V2 V3 0.74* 0.92* 0.92* Language Use L1 L2 L3 0.54* 0.91* 0.87* Mechanics M1 M2 M3 0.32 0.26 0.47*

To answer the third research question, students generally revealed fairly positive attitudes toward the effectiveness of the online academic vocabulary instruction based on analyses of the responses to the evaluation questionnaire. Most questionnaire items were designed in a five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree (calculating as 5 points) to strongly disagree (1 point). Some open-ended descriptions and ranking choices were also included. The questionnaire consisted of 25 items to elicit learners attitudes about the web-based academic vocabulary instruction under three categories (See Table 3): the design of online materials (1st to 11th items, mean=3.78 out of 5), features fostering vocabulary learning and writing performance (12th to 21st items, mean=3.73), and future learning motivation (22nd to 25th items, mean= 3.95). For the features of online design, a majority of the learners (the sum of strongly agree and agree, 80%) perceived the overall online lessons as user-friendly (Item2, M=3.76), and they ranked the Academic Word Lessons as the most
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useful, followed by downloadable resources and student assignment sections as the secondly, while the Writing Center (providing online links for academic writing) as the least useful (See Table 4). In addition, the learners indicated some directions for future modifications of the online lesson design: I like the links that provide us information about concordances. However, the overall design of this website is not clear enough. And the best and the worst thing of online resources is that there are so much information that I can choose from. However, too much information also means that we have to spend more time on selecting useful knowledge..

CONCLUSION The present study examined the usefulness of an Internet-based lexical syllabus in enlarging college learners academic vocabulary store for their writing abilities. With a series of literacy practices and e-referencing tools, the learners seem to expand their productive AWL uses to some extent. The results indicate that the lexical syllabus is relatively effective in enhancing the depth of learners academic vocabulary, while the growth of vocabulary size is less significant. The productive uses of AWL items in the learners essays also expand to some extent. This appears to contribute to the learners overall writing quality, according to the rating of the ESL Composition Profile. Besides the quantitative testing results, the learners also expressed positive attitudes towards the design and functions of the online lexical instruction. However, which instructional practice is the most useful one for the EFL productive lexical teaching remains unknown. Future inquires may focus on the effect of each teaching task. Thus, more promising teaching practices for how to help the EFL learners enlarge their productive vocabulary can be empirically established.

REFERENCES Brandle, K. (2002). Integrating Internet-based reading materials into the foreign language curriculum: From teacher to student-centered approaches. Language Learning and Technology, 6(3), 87-107. Available online http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num3/brandle/, downloaded on 10/08/2006. Cobb, T. (1999). Breadth and depth of lexical acquisition with hands-on concordancing. Computer Assisted Language Learning,12(4) , 345-360. Conzett (2000). Integrating collocation into a reading and writing course. In M. Lewis (Eds.), Teaching Collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp. 70-87). London: Commercial Colour Press, plc. Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238. Coxhead, A. (2006). Essentials of Teaching Academic Vocabulary. Boston, U.S.: Houghton Mifflin
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Company. Folse, K. S. (2004). Vocabulary Myths. Ann Arbor, U.S.: The University of Michigan Press. Hulstijn, J. H. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: a reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In P. Robinson (Ed), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 258-286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horst, M. & Cobb, T. & Nicolae, I. (2005). Expanding academic vocabulary with an interactive online database. Language Learning & Technology, 9, 90-110. Available online [http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num2/horst/default.html] downloaded on May 20, 2006. Huntley, H. (2006). Essential academic vocabulary: mastering the complete academic word list. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston. Joe, A. (1998). What effects do text-based tasks promoting generation have on incidental vocabulary acquisition? Applied Linguistics, 19(3) , 357-377. Kaur, J. & Hegelheimer, V. (2005). ESL students use of concordance in the transfer of academic word knowledge: an exploratory study. Computer Assisted Language Learning,18(4) , 287-310. Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: same or different? Applied Linguistics, 19(2) , 255-271. Laufer, B. & Hulstijn, J. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The construct of task-induced involvement. Applied Linguistics, 22(1), 1-26. Laufer, B. & Goldestein, Z. (2004). Testing vocabulary knowledge: Size, strength, and computer adaptiveness. Language Learning, 54(3), 399-436. Lee, C. Y. (2001). A study of using web concordancing for English vocabulary learning in a Taiwanese high school context. (Unpublished MA thesis). Taiwan: National Tsing Hua University Library. Lee. S. L. & Munice, J. (2006). From respective to productive: Improving ESL learners use of vocabulary in a postreading composition task. TESOL Quarterly, 40 (2), 295-320. Lee, S. L. (2003). ESL learners vocabulary use in writing and the effects of vocabulary instruction. System, 31, 537-561. Liou, H. C. (2006). Corpus analysis for innovative online English learning. In R.Chung et al., (Eds.), Language Linguistics Monograph Series Number W-7:Festschrift in honor of professor Chin-Chuan Cheng on his 70th birthday(pp. 89-112). Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academic Sinica. Luke, C. L. (2006). Fostering learner autonomy in a technology-enhanced, inquiry-based foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 39(1), 71-86. Mudraya, O. (2006). Engineering English: A lexical frequency instructional model, English for Specific Purposes, 25, 235-256. Nation, P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Resource of the Academic Word List. Retrieved August, 29, 2006, from the World Wide Web of Averil, Coxheads website: http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/awlinfo.shtml. Resource of TANGO. Retrieved August, 29, 2006, from the World Wide Web of CANDLE-national
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e-learning project: http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/collocation. Resource of the AWL highlighter. Retrieved August, 29, 2006, from the World Wide Web of Sandra Haywoods website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab. Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in Language Teaching. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D. & Clapham, C., (2001). Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the vocabulary level test. Language Testing, 18(1), 55-88. Wesche, M., & Paribakht, T. (1996). Assessing second language vocabulary knowledge: depth verse breadth. The Canadian Modern Journal Review, 53(1), 13-39. Xue, G. & Nation, P. (1984). A university word list. Language Learning Communication, 3 , 215-229. APPENDICES Appendix A: Sample items for 2 vocabulary tests 1. area _____ written agreement 2. contract 3. definition _____ way of doing something 4. evidence 5. method _____ reason for believing something is or not true6. role 11. Aggregate:
Item I. II. III. IV. V. VI. Category I dont remember having seen this word before. I have seen this word before, but I dont know what it means. I havent seen this word before, but I think it means_____________. I have seen this word before, and I think it means_____________ .(synonym or translation) I know this word. It means_____________. (synonym or translation) I can use this word in a sentence :_______________.(If you do this section, please also do section V.)

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