Measuring Academic Vocabulary Breadth and Depth in Upper-Elementary School Students

This study analyzes a newly developed measure for assessing the knowledge of general academic vocabulary in upper-elementary school students in Croatia. This researcher-designed instrument assesses students' command of synonymy and the limits of collocational use as a proxy for academic vocabulary breadth and depth. Elementary school students in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grade participated in the study (N =152, 69,7% girls). In addition to the newly developed measure for assessing general academic vocabulary, students completed the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scales, a standardized measure of general vocabulary knowledge. The results show that the newly developed instrument for measuring general academic vocabulary knowledge is reliable and valid-it has adequate internal consistency, is sensitive to the expected age and gender differences in vocabulary, and correlates highly with the results obtained by the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scales. This new instrument could fill the gap in academic vocabulary-related research since the currently available vocabulary assessment measures in Croatian do not focus on this particular register. More specifically, our new measure could be used to evaluate various types of academic vocabulary interventions in schools.