Abstract
Abstract
The relationship between vocabulary and writing is that of mutual contribution and support. Lexical quality of a piece of writing is contingent upon lexical sophistication (the percent of infrequent words), lexical diversity (the ratio of unique words), and collocational competence (the number of accurate and closely associated unique collocations). The use of lexis in writing improves with the growth in proficiency, but the pace of the improvement seems to lag behind the pace of vocabulary knowledge growth. Writing practice has been one of the most effective ways of entrenching the practiced vocabulary in learners' memory. However, there is not enough evidence to show whether writing leads to long‐term use of better vocabulary of learners' free choice. The effectiveness of writing tasks has been attributed to their cognitive demands, and explained in terms of three learning theories: the Pushed Output Hypothesis, the Involvement Load Hypothesis, and the Technique Feature Analysis.