Measuring Vocabulary Level Among Omani Tertiary-Level Students and its Effect on their Communicative Ability: A Cross-Sectional Study

It is indisputable that vocabulary acquisition is central to successful language acquisition. A wealth of research on language learning and teaching indicates that vocabulary is one of the most essential precursors to other language abilities (Cummins, 2001; 2008; Snow Kim, 2007). Indeed, as Roche Harrington (2013) point out, the preponderance of evidence indicates that in order for an L2 to become a vehicle for learning, vocabulary knowledge must first be sufficiently developed (p. 3). Particularly in the EFL context, as Lin Hsu (2013) explain, a limited vocabulary would impede language learning because vocabulary undergirds the four components of language (p. 110). Much vocabulary research has focused on determining the most frequently occurring words in the English language, and Laufer (1992) claims that second language readers of English need to have a vocabulary of at least 3000 word families in order to have some knowledge of 95 percent of the running words in a text ( ed in Shen, 2013, p. 77). However, as explained by Webb Chang (2012), in an EFL context, research has shown that students may not know the high frequency words even after years of English instruction . While research on the importance of vocabulary in aiding successful language acquisition, particularly English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) abounds in other parts of the world, such research is sparse in the Middle East, and particularly in the Sultanate of Oman. This study aims to fill that gap, by determining if and how vocabulary is taught at the tertiary level in Oman, and the effect of vocabulary skills on students' communicative ability.