A test of controlled productive knowledge of English academic vocabulary

Within the field of language education, language assessment is an important concern, for both pedagogical and research purposes. Vocabulary is a key aspect of language proficiency, underpinning the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. In academic contexts, of particular importance is academic vocabulary, the part of the lexicon which is better represented in academic than in general discourse, and which constitutes a key dimension of students’ academic literacy. The present paper details the design and initial validation of a new test of controlled productive knowledge of English academic vocabulary. The test design closely follows that of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1999) but the new instrument – named the Productive Academic Vocabulary Test – uses a different basis for defining academic vocabulary and employs an updated set of scoring principles. The test was validated using scores from 232 participants at three Swedish universities. Findings indicate that the test can discriminate levels of knowledge of English academic vocabulary amongst the target population and that the scoring principles provide a nuanced measure of vocabulary knowledge. Pedagogical and research implications are discussed.