Institute of Education, University of London, UK.
Br J Psychol. 2010 May;101(Pt 2):221-42. doi: 10.1348/000712608X371744. Epub 2009 Dec 14.
In this paper we introduce a comprehensive database of the vocabulary in reading materials used by 5 - 9 year old children in the UK. The database is available on-line http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/cpwd and allows researchers into early reading development the possibility of rigorous control over critical characteristics of experimental stimuli such as word frequency, regularity and length, frequency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods etc. The on-line database is also a resource that can be used by practitioners with interests in literacy development and literacy instruction. It can be used to obtain characteristics for a user-generated list of words, or else to generate a list of words according to constraints specified by the user. Here we present an overview of the construction of the database, the materials entered into it, the survey of schools by which we obtained information about the books that were most likely to be used by children in each age group, and the search features available on the database website. We also discuss certain characteristics of the Vocabulary itself and compare these with those reported in an earlier non-representative database reported in Stuart, Dixon, Masterson and Gray (2003). We then present a detailed analysis of the characteristics of Vocabulary in books used in the Reception year, against the background of recent recommendations for change in the early teaching of reading. Finally, we present data showing that the database is indeed already proving a useful resource for both practitioners and researchers.
本文介绍了一个综合的英国 5-9 岁儿童阅读材料词汇数据库。该数据库可在线获取，网址为 http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/cpwd，它为早期阅读发展研究人员提供了对实验刺激物关键特征进行严格控制的可能性，如词汇频率、规则性和长度、字母-音位对应频率、正字法和语音近邻等。在线数据库也是对读写发展和读写教学感兴趣的从业者的资源。它可以用来获取用户生成单词列表的特征，也可以根据用户指定的约束条件生成单词列表。本文概述了数据库的构建、输入的材料、我们通过调查学校获得的关于每个年龄组儿童最有可能使用的书籍信息，以及数据库网站上的搜索功能。我们还讨论了词汇本身的某些特征，并将这些特征与斯图尔特、迪克森、马斯特森和格雷（2003 年）报告的早期非代表性数据库中的特征进行了比较。然后，我们详细分析了幼儿园阶段使用的书籍中词汇的特征，背景是近期对早期阅读教学改革的建议。最后，我们提供的数据表明，该数据库确实已经成为从业者和研究人员的有用资源。
