Validation of Lexical Frequency Profiles As A Measure of Lexical Richness in Written Discourse

Technological developments and their utilities in various areas including education have offered greatadvantages for man. one of the greatest achievements in this trend has heen the innovation in computer software likelexical frequency profiles (lfp) and its pedagogical implications either in teaching or measurement. to take themaximum advantages, this study seeks to validate the lfp as a measure of lexical richness in written discourse ofiranian efl learners. 50 students majoring in english translation participated in this study; each of them wasencouraged to develop two compositions on general topics in order to establish vocabprofile indexes. to estimate thereliability of the lfp, the vocabprofile indexes of two writings were correlated, but for the validity purpose, first, aproductive version of vocabulary levels test (vlt) was administered and second, the students' compositions werefed into p_lex software to elicit p_lex index. after that, vocabprofile indexes were correlated with vlt scores andp_lex index separately. the findings of the study revealed that students' vocabprofile indexes written on twodifferent topics correlated significantly with each other. because of such a significant correlation coefficients, and thelfp indexes are related to vlt active test and p_lex index, it is conservatively safe to claim that vocabprofileindexes are to some extent reliable and valid measurement instruments but not strong enough to be used as a standalonemeasure for tbe assessment of lexical richness. pedagogically speaking, the lpf is suggested as a relativelyreliable and valid measure to be used along with other dependable devices in measuring lexical richness in discoursesof various types.