Difficulty level of word aspects : an exploratory study on developmental hierarchy of vocabulary acquisition

Multidimensional vocabulary knowledge highlights the complexity of the vocabulary learning process. Knowing a word includes becoming familiarised with different aspects of that word, i.e. its phonological, orthographic, morphological, syntactic and sematic aspects. Laufer (1990, 1997, 2013) discussed the difficulties of different aspects of a word in an attempt to explain the reasons why some words are difficult or easy to learn by second language learners. More importantly, the ease and difficulty of different components of vocabulary knowledge may imply a sequence of vocabulary acquisition (Laufer 1997). Practically, knowledge of the difficulty level of different vocabulary aspects can indicate what second language learners should pay attention to when learning a word and how instructors can facilitate students effectively when teaching vocabulary. The study presented in this chapter is an exploratory endeavour to seek developmental hierarchy of vocabulary acquisition process, if any, among multiple aspects of vocabulary knowledge using the difficulty level of the word aspects estimated by Rasch analysis.