Is the Vocabulary Level of the Reading Section of the TOEFL Internet-Based Test Beyond the Lexical Level of Japanese Senior High School Students? - Abstract

Sep 28, 2026

This study examines whether the lexical level of the reading section of the TOEFL Internet-based Test (TOEFL iBT) exceeds the vocabulary level of Japanese senior high school graduates. Lexical level is operationalized via text coverage. Using real past TOEFL iBTs, the study evaluates comprehension support from vocabulary sizes aligned with Japan’s Ministry targets and estimates the size needed for 95% and 98% coverage.

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Article Is the Vocabulary Level of the Reading Section of the TOEFL Internet-Based Test Beyond the Lexical Level of Japanese Senior High School Students? Masaya Kaneko Tokyo Denki University doi: [http://dx.doi.org/10.7820/vli.v03.1.kaneko](http://dx.doi.org/10.7820/vli.v03.1.kaneko) Abstract The main goal of the present study is to answer the question of whether the lexical level of the reading section of the TOEFL Internet-based Test (TOEFL iBT) is beyond the vocabulary level of Japanese senior highschool graduates. The lexical level was measured in terms of text coverage. The present study builds upon Chujo and Oghigian's study. The notable difference in methodology compared to earlier text coverage studies on the TOEFL is an examination of real past TOEFL iBTs. Two objectives are explored in the present study. First, this study aims to examine how well a vocabulary of 3,000 word families, which is the lexical size target for Japanese high school graduates set by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, enables students to comprehend reading passages in the TOEFL iBT. Second, it estimates a vocabulary size required to reach 95% and 98% coverage of these passages. Results showed that the most frequent 3,000 word families plus proper nouns as well as words that are defined in context yielded an average text coverage of 88.5% and that 6,000 word families plus proper nouns and defined words accounted for 95% of the text, and around 10,000 word families 98% . The findings suggest that Japanese high school graduates with a vocabulary of 3,000 word families would be expected to comprehend nearly 50% of reading passages in the TOEFL iBT and that learning a vocabulary beyond the 10,000-word frequency level may not be necessary unless 98% or more text coverage is required. 1 Background On April 8, 2013 the education reform panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan suggested that the TOEFL Internet-based Test (TOEFL iBT) replace the National Center Test, which has been used for admission to all national, public, and 520 private universities in Japan (as of 2013) . The proposal has provoked widespread criticism. One of the main objections to the adoption of the TOEFL iBT stems from arguments that a vocabulary beyond the 10,000-word frequency level is required to comprehend passages in the TOEFL and that the lexical level of the TOEFL therefore surpasses the level expected of Japanese senior high school graduates. In a newspaper article appearing in the Asahi Shimbun (Anonymous, 2013), Erikawa claims that the TOEFL requires a vocabulary beyond Please cite this article as: Kaneko, M. (2014) . Is the vocabulary level of the reading section of the TOEFL Internet-based Test beyond the lexical level of Japanese senior high school students? Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, 3 (1), 44–50 . doi: 10 .7820/vli.v03 .1. kaneko the 10,000-word frequency level. Sato (2013) maintains that a 15,000–30,000-wordfrequency-level vocabulary is needed for the TOEFL. Past L2-reading research investigating the effect of the percentage of known words in discourse on comprehension suggests that achieving 95%(Laufer, 1989) or 98%(Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011) coverage allows readers to gain adequate comprehension. Findings from several text coverage studies on the TOEFL partially support claims made by Erikawa and Sato. Hirai (2000) examined six reading passages from an unofficial TOEFL preparation book. The vocabulary level was measured using the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953) and the University Word List (UWL) (Xue & Nation, 1984) . She found that the 2,800 word families on the two lists provided an average coverage of 86 .6% and that proper nouns made up around 2% of the texts. Hirai concluded that learning low-frequency vocabulary is necessary to prepare for the TOEFL, because it constituted more than 10% of the text. Mizumot

FAQs

What is the main research question of the study?

Whether the reading-section lexical level of the TOEFL iBT is beyond the vocabulary level expected for Japanese senior high school graduates.

How does the study measure lexical level?

It measures lexical level in terms of text coverage of reading passages.

What vocabulary sizes and coverage results does the study report?

The most frequent 3,000 word families plus proper nouns and context-defined words yield average 88.5% coverage; 6,000 word families reach about 95%, and around 10,000 word families reach about 98%.

Sep 28, 2026

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