Complexity: Activity 4
Lexical complexity (TTR) on oral and written versions of a narrative task
Some learners may use relatively simple sentence structure with a wide range of vocabulary words, while for other learners, the reverse may be true. Breadth of vocabulary is a type of complexity. One way to measure lexical complexity is to count the variety of words that occur in a segment of written or spoken text: Type-Token Ratio (TTR). (See the Overview of Complexity page for more details).
The TTR is the total number of different words used (types) divided by the total number of words in the segment (token). Please look at the following example:
As you can see the total number of tokens in this question is 11, and the number of different words used in this question (types) is 10. So the TTR is 10/11.
is a filler, and the second 
is a repetition.
PLEASE NOTE: We did not count hesitations, false starts, and repetitions.
Instructions: For both learners, count the first 50 words for the oral narrative. Download the Transcript for this Activity, if a paper copy is preferred:
Now do the same for their written narratives (count 50 words) narrative:
Look at Pari and Fereshteh’s oral and written narratives and answer the following questions:
1. Compute the TTR for the first 50-word segment of Pari’s oral and written narratives and compare their results. What does this comparison tell you about Pari’s vocabulary?
2. Compute the TTR for the first 50-word segment of Fereshteh’s oral and written narratives. What does this comparison tell you about Fereshteh’s vocabulary?
3. What differences or similarities do you see between speakers and in their lexical complexity in response to the two tasks? Can you explain these?
4. Look at the first 50-word segment of Pari’s speech from the Question Task and compute the TTR. Compare it to the TTR from her oral narrative. Does the difference in tasks affect the variety of her vocabulary? Explain.
Please type your answers to the questions in the box below.
When you have finished typing your answer, click to compare your response with the Learner Language staff response.
PLEASE NOTE: We did not count hesitations, false starts, and repetitions.
- Compute the TTR for the first 50-word segment of Pari’s oral and written narratives and compare their results. What does this comparison tell you about Pari’s vocabulary?
- Compute the TTR for the first 50-word segment of Fereshteh’s oral and written narratives. What differences or similarities do you see between speakers and in their lexical complexity in response to the two tasks? Can you explain these?
- Look at the first 50-word segment of Pari’s speech from the Question Task and compute the TTR. Compare it to the TTR from her oral narrative. Does the difference in tasks affect the richness of her vocabulary? Explain.
Pari’s Oral Narrative TTR:
29/50
Pari’s Written Narrative TTR: 37/50
The words Pari chooses for her oral and written narratives are very similar. She used one adjective “sheytun” (Naughty) in her oral narrative but she did not use it again in her written. Perhaps she had difficulty with the spelling of the word “sheytun”. Overall Persian spelling is very challenging for second language learners because there might be more than one letter corresponding to some consonants and there are some vowels that we pronounce but do not write them down. As you can see in Pari’s writing, she spells the way she pronounces the words: for instance look at the way she spells the word “mizareh” (put).
Fereshteh’s Oral Narrative TTR: 33/50
Fereshteh’s Written Narrative TTR: 34/50
The words Fereshteh uses for her oral and written narrative are similar, with slightly more repetition in the oral than the written narrative. Fereshteh uses two adjectives in her written narrative “lus” (Spoiled) and “sheytun” (Naughty). The spelling of her adjectives is not correct but you can see that she provides us with the English translation of some of the words when she was not sure about their spellings. More over she tries to use quotation marks for direct speech after “maman bozorg goft (*ghoft)” (Grandmother said) and “dokhtær (*doktær) goft (*ghoft)” (the girl said). Although Fereshteh is not an advanced learner, she did a good job on role playing and using Persian colloquial and expressions both in her oral and written narratives; for instance: “che khæbær?” (whats up?) and “delæm bærat tæng shode” (I miss you).
Because the oral narrative was completely unrehearsed, one can see/hear a lot of hesitations, false starts and fillers. The written task is a little more familiar to the learners because they have already told the story once orally. Hence one might think that their active vocabulary in the written narrative should be more varied than in their oral narrative.
Pari’s Question Task TTR: 34/50
The TTR for this segment is close to the TTR for her written and oral narratives. The Oral Narrative and Question Task are similar because they both require language for concrete entities that are shown in the pictures.
