PET词汇表VOCABULARY LIST.doc

PAGE PAGE 13 VOCABULARY LIST Preliminary English Test (PET) Introduction to the PET Vocabulary List The PET Vocabulary List gives teachers a guide to the vocabulary needed when preparing students for the PET examination. Background to the List The PET list was originally developed by Cambridge ESOL in consultation with external consultants to guide item writers who produce materials for the PET examination. It includes vocabulary from the Council of Europe’s Threshold (1990) specification and other vocabulary which corpus evidence shows is high-frequency. The list covers vocabulary appropriate to this level of English and includes receptive vocabulary (words that the candidate is expected to understand but which is not the focus of a question), and productive vocabulary (words that the candidate needs to know to answer a question). The list does not provide an exhaustive list of all words which appear on the PET question papers and candidates should not confine their study of vocabulary to the list alone. How the List is Updated The vocabulary of English changes over time, with words being added and other words falling into disuse. In order to maintain its currency, the PET list is updated on an annual basis by the addition and removal of words, using a corpus-based approach. Suggested additions to the wordlist are collated and the frequency of these words is obtained by reference to established corpora (electronic databases). The corpora in question represent receptive and productive language in general contexts. The main corpora used for the validation of the PET Vocabulary List are: the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC) which includes over 20 million words of written learner English at six levels; the British National Corpus (BNC) which includes 100 million words of written and spoken native speaker data. Organisation of the List Word sets Some categories of words a learner at this level might be expected to know are not included in the alphabetical list but are