Language competence

This thesis argues that greater focus should be directed towards the lexicon of Dickens, with this position being justified from two directions. Firstly, the grammatical rules in English are far more limited than the volume of lexicon in any given genre, even before beginning to consider the vast lexical depths of the English language in general. This suggests that when learners of English attain advanced levels, their grammatical competence in its narrow sense (syntactic knowledge and performance) and awareness of the language structure can be fairly classified as being advanced. That is, the accuracy of their output is advanced in terms of producing relatively accurate grammatically coherent English. Conversely, in the case of the lexicon competence this would appear to be limited, since it is unlikely that non-native speakers will have mastered the lexical level that renders them close to native-like levels through merely studying for three years out of four (e.g. a BA programme of four years) before they are classified as advanced learners. Furthermore, from the above analysis, the readers classified at the advanced level according to two prominent publishers do not exceed the ceiling of 3,000 headwords

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in their vocabulary size, although the dispersion of such headwords may vary from one publisher to another (see Leech, Rayson & Wilson 2001; Nation 2012).

Further justification for the focus on Dickens’s lexicon is the established relationship between vocabulary size and comprehension. In order to assist learners in coping with authentic texts, the extent of their vocabulary knowledge has to be increased. It has been reported that ‘vocabulary size scores correlate well with and predict scores in formal writing, reading comprehension and grammatical accuracy’ (Meara & Milton 2003, cited in Milton 2009: 171). Moreover, Bernhardt (2011) points out that when placing any focus on the distinctions between reading by native and non-native speakers, the depth of vocabulary knowledge and ability to comprehend highlight most clearly the differences between the former and the latter, while Milton (2009) underscores the ‘strong relationship between text coverage and comprehension; that the more words you know, the better you will be able to understand when reading or listening in the foreign language’ (Milton 2009: 47). Other studies also confirm this relationship between vocabulary size and comprehension, including Wagner, Muse and Tannenbaum (2007) and Qian (2002). Nagy (2007) asserts the ‘correlation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension’ (Nagy 2007: 52), while Carlisle (2007) considers the ‘[b]readth and depth of word knowledge [as being] a key factor in reading comprehension’ (Carlisle 2007: 78). Lexical competence refers to the learner’s ability to perceive and utilise a lexical item, inclusive of engaging with the breadth and the depth of vocabulary knowledge. The breadth of vocabulary knowledge (vocabulary size) denotes the quantity (number) of known lexical items, while the depth of vocabulary knowledge describes the extent of the learner’s knowledge of the various aspects of a given word, i.e. how well these words are known (Qian 2002). These two dimensions of knowledge are measurable and considered when analysing the DCC, with the aim of assisting learners in the reading and comprehension of Dickens’s work. Since these studies have all established a consistent relationship between the size of vocabulary

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and reading comprehension, this awareness can prove beneficial for instructors who teach and engage with reading in order to direct their learners’ attention towards the core elements that can assist them in achieving the comprehension of given texts.

Questioning the relationship between grammaticalness and interpretability, Widdowson (1975) argues that any understanding of a literary text does not solely rely ‘on the reader’s knowledge of the language system or code’ (Widdowson 1975: 32–3), and that it is common to encounter deviations from such systems that can be understood by readers. It is thus safe to assert that while the grammar itself can scaffold the readers’ understanding of the texts, it cannot in itself be sufficient to assist (non-native) readers’ interpretation of the literary work as a discourse. The distinction between text and discourse in this regard is that the discourse is a text in context, where ‘linguistic elements function to communicate effect’ (Widdowson 1975: 33). A more specific term that describes the functionality of text in use (discourse) is Lewis’s (1993) co-text, which refers to the ‘linguistic environment’ (Lewis 1993: 80);that is, the ‘textual context’ of a given text, as described by Brown and Miller (2013: 114). Contrary to the notion of co-text is context, which refers to the ‘situational factors’ (Lewis 1993: 80), including the ‘general knowledge of the world held by speakers and hearers’ (Brown & Miller 2013: 107). It is evident that meaning can be understood succinctly by ensuring that the readers’ grammatical knowledge is able to comprehend the basic structure of the literary texts that matches the elementary knowledge of the language code. This is the first foundation from which the reader can progress towards comprehending the discourse, providing that they are equipped with the necessary lexical knowledge. The studying of Dickens’s lexicon will be conducted in Chapter 5 in regards to its co-text with the help of corpus linguistic techniques, which assist in the study of vocabulary in its co-text (see Gilquin 2010: 169).

Likewise, and as Widdowson (1975) suggests, grammar is insufficient to enable the full understanding of a discourse, despite it of course facilitating the

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reader’s understanding of the text. Nevertheless, if the grammar does not enable the reader to understand a discourse (i.e. a text in use), then it is unlikely that more sophisticated meanings related to a given culture can be comprehended through merely the knowledge of the code or the grammar of the language. This stance becomes increasingly evident when it is applied to non-native readers of English at advanced levels, where there is a lack of vocabulary knowledge and the cultural background necessary to respond to some of the triggers found in the discourse, unless it is instructed by another, perhaps more overt medium. This argument for the significance of lexicon for advanced learners can be correlated in the words of Lewis (1993), where he states: ‘[l]anguage consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar’ (Lewis 1993: vi), as addressed above (see Section 1.2.2).

2.6 Conclusion

This chapter has demonstrated why Dickens’s works as authentic materials, which were not written with non-native readers or teaching purposes in mind, result in the need for non-native readers to deal with them differently. Identifying the source of difficulty confirms the importance of tackling this issue from another perspective, particularly when dealing with Dickens’s works which are deemed to be complex and may be seen as relatively dated to learners of the English language in the contemporary arena. The justification for this necessity is the fact that authentic texts ‘embody characteristics that specially-devised teaching materials often fail to capture or which they distort’, as Rixon (2000: 68) suggests. In order to tackle the challenges encountered in reading Dickens’s works, the focus of my study will be on lexical items and the typical usages found in his texts. Aluísio et al. (2008) affirm that the utilisation of ‘low-frequency words, among other things, increase[s] text complexity’ for non-native readers (Aluísio et al. 2008: 16). Regardless of the extent to which this study argues for the need to assist non-native readers in comprehending Dickens’s works as authentic texts by focusing on Dickens’s lexicon, it is by no means claimed that mastering vocabulary will automatically ensure full comprehension. As a matter

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of fact, comprehension as a cognitive process can be affected by other related factors such as the reader’s ‘language proficiency, reading proficiency, or background knowledge’ (Crossley, Yang & McNamara 2014: 96), which cannot be covered in one study addressing a complete corpus of Dickens. In Chapter 5, the investigation will focus on Dickens’s works by aiming to provide an enhanced understanding of the level of complexity in lexical terms, and how non-native readers can approach such tasks with greater confidence. By no means does this undermine other crucial factors that are associated with reading and comprehension, which alongside lexical items include the grammar and sentence length, the syntax and discourse markers, reference clarity, the progression of subordinate clauses in a linear fashion, avoiding any embedding that is complex in nature, and the equal weighting of new and given information and style components (see the Oxford Bookworms syllabus).

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