Two vocabulary size tests, one receptive and one productive, were administered on a total of 72 non-English
major college students in China. The grading of the receptive test was done in terms of correct/incorrect for each
item. The grading of the productive test was done in terms of correct, partially correct, and incorrect. One point
was awarded to every correct answer. Half a point was awarded to every partially correct answer. For the
productive test, grammatical mistakes were ignored and minor spelling mistakes were marked as partially correct.
The decision made on those partially correct answers was based on the pronunciation of the answers. If the
misspelled answer had the same or about the same pronunciation as the target word, it was regarded as partially
correct. For example, if the target word was “philosophy” but the student misspelled the word as “phylosophy”,
the answer was marked as partially correct. The grading of the receptive test was done by one teacher and that of
the productive test was done separately by two teachers.