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MultilingProfiler: An example of adaptive multilingual vocabulary profiling
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Description: The appropriate unit for counting and evaluating lexical knowledge in vocabulary studies is a topic of ongoing debate. Many researchers adopt a word family approach, while others have suggested that a lemma or flemma approach might be more suitable depending on the learner group (e.g., McLean, 2018). Recently, attention has shifted to the importance of varying the lexical unit depending on the pedagogical purpose and learner variables (e.g., Cobb & Laufer, 2021; Webb, 2021), an idea first proposed by Bauer and Nation (1993), who described seven graded levels of word family for systematic vocabulary teaching and learning. Such an approach is very important for languages including French, German, and Spanish that are declined or highly inflected. Learners of such languages with limited L2 grammatical knowledge, for example, may find mastering lemmas or flemmas more challenging than acquiring regular and transparent affixes. However, few profiling tools appear to offer this functionality. In response to these issues, this paper introduces MultilingProfiler (Finlayson et al., 2022), an adaptive, multilingual vocabulary profiling tool that is designed to give vocabulary researchers and materials developers more control over the lexical unit used to create vocabulary profiles. With MultilingProfiler, users can select which inflected and derived forms to include in their word definition or choose a pre-made word list that aligns with the grammar specifications of a particular curriculum or stage in a program of study. In the paper, we show how MultilingProfiler has already proved valuable in the creation of nationwide language examinations in the UK.