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Word Power - 2

Little is known about the vocabulary skills of Malaysian students.  Even less is known about the extent to which they have mastery over the very significant portion which falls into the category of “academic vocabulary”.  The purpose of this research was to measure the vocabulary proficiency of a sample of UiTM students.

Beglar and Hunt’s (1998) Revised 2,000 Word Level Test and Revised University Word Level Test were adopted as the test instruments for the study. Test items were drawn from two vocabulary lists: the 2,000-word level General Word List (GWL) consists of the 2,000 most frequently occurring words in the English language, and the University Word List (UWL) contains 800 word families.  Words in the UWL occur frequently in academic texts over a wide range of disciplines and account for between 8 and 10 per cent of all words in academic texts.  Typical words include: accompany; formulate; objective; major; indicate. Each test consisted of 27 items; a score of 23 correct answers is considered the minimum needed for effective comprehension of textbooks.