Measuring the receptive and the productive vocabulary sizes of Libyan secondary school students

Abstract

Libya is one of the Arab countries that present English asa main subject within the curriculum in primary school, secondary school as well as university, and teaching English in Libyan schools has a long history. However, as there are not any studies that measure the vocabulary size of Libyan students, we do not know their receptive and productive vocabulary size, consequently, we do not know whether their vocabulary knowledge allow them to study in an English environment or not. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the receptive and the productive vocabulary size of Libyan secondary school students, also, it aimed to determine the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary. The target participants of this study were 60 students from three different levels in a secondary school. Two kinds of vocabulary tests were used to measure students' vocabulary size, the X-Lex test to measure the receptive vocabulary and the translation test to measure the productive vocabulary. The obtained results of this study showed that Libyan students leave secondary school with a reasonable number of words. The findings also indicated that receptive vocabulary size and productive vocabulary size were almost the same and that any increase in receptive vocabulary leads to an increase in productive vocabulary.