Abstract

This study measured Saudi university students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge towards the end of their final semester. The subjects were 71 Saudi male and female students. The Vocabulary Levels Test, adopted from Nation’s (2008), was administered in this study. The test assesses learners’ receptive knowledge of word meaning at the following distinct vocabulary levels: the 2^nd 1,000-word level, the 3^rd 1,000-word level, the 5^th 1,000-word level, the 10^th 1,000-word level, and the Academic Word List (AWL). The results showed different participants’ performance at different word levels with decreasing mean scores as the frequency of word levels decreased. The results also showed, with no exception, that males outperformed females with statistically significant differences in all the five sections of the test. The participants’ average vocabulary size is approximately 876 and 799 words in the 2^nd 1,000-word level, 436 and 355 words in the AWL, 725 and 590 words in the 3^rd 1,000-word level, 580 and 477 words in the 5^th 1,000-word level for males and females respectively. However, the average vocabulary size decreased dramatically in the 10^th 1,000-word level to 254 words for males and 124 for females. Based on these findings, it is concluded that Saudi English Language and Translation university graduates, even with large vocabulary size in the high frequency bands, are generally still below the level of the desired vocabulary competency as EFL learners, and are in fact, in need for more support and concentration in their undergraduate study with regard to their vocabulary learning.

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