An analysis of lexical richness in written production of Turkish efl students

This study primarily aims at analysing L2 lexical richness and word frequency levels in free essays written by students studying at foreign language departments of high schools and attending to two private language teaching institutions located in Hatay, Turkey. It also targets to find out whether there is a correlation between the average score of students' pilot LYS- 5 foreign language exam and lexical richness in their essays. The analysis of lexical richness and identification of word frequency levels were carried out by using two measuring software programs called RANGE and FRE-QUENCY. Developed by Heatley, Nation, and Coxhead (2002), RANGE gives information about the distribution of words or other lexical units across a set of two or more texts. Included in the same package with RANGE, frequency list of all the words in a single text can be found by FREQUENCY. As a second researching area, 4 teachers of English who are educating 50 participants partaking in the current study were interviewed in order to find out their general opinions on L2 lexical richness and what they do in order to enhance their student's lexical knowledge. The result of the analysis showed that students free written essays contained higher percentages of words belonging to the word list one than it is supposed to be. By word list one, it is meant the most frequently used words in English. When examined individually, students with higher average pilot test scores are found to use lexically richer words compared to the students with lower average pilot test scores in general terms. Then the students were grouped in three according to their average pilot test scores. Group 1 consisted of students with the highest average test score. Group 2 were formed with the students having a medium average test score and lastly, Group 3 included students with the lowest average test score. When the lexical analysis of essay of these three groups was made, it was found that essays written by the participants may not reflect their academic success in English test scores or the average test scores that the participants have may not always guarantee the usage of words that belong to the academic word list. As for the result of the interviews, teachers fundamentally highlighted that increasing lexical richness is students' own responsibility. Additionally, all the interviewees agreed that rich vocabulary help students produce better quality essays because students having a wide range of rich vocabulary can express their ideas effectively. Keywords: Lexical richness, lexical frequency profile, RANGE, essay writing