The Relationship between Productive Vocabulary and Argumentative Essay Writing Proficiency among IELTS Test Takers in Pakistan

Abstract

The current research attempts to examine the correlation between productive vocabulary and writing proficiency. Two different instruments were manipulated to find the link between productive vocabulary and argumentative essay writing proficiency in the present research. The PVLT (Productive Vocabulary Level Test) Parallel version (version A+ version C) designed by Laufer& Nation, 1999 was adopted and utilized as a tool to measure the student’s productive vocabulary. To check writing proficiency a prompt of argumentative essay writing was assigned to the students and the time allowed for both tests was 60 minutes. The sample comprised 128 (39 female and 86 male) IELTS test takers in Pakistan.  The essay writings were marked by IELTS band descriptors. The data were analyzed by performing the Pearson correlation coefficient. Pearson correlation coefficient analysis revealed that there was no noteworthy correlation between writing proficiency and productive vocabulary.