upper-elementary school students (5th,6th,7th grade), MHV, MOAV, GAVM, gender, grade

This study analyzes a newly developed measure for assessing the knowledge of generalacademic vocabulary in upper-elementary school students in Croatia. This researcher-designedinstrument assesses students’ command of synonymy and the limits of collocational use as aproxy for academic vocabulary breadth and depth. Elementary school students in the 5th , 6th ,and 7th grade participated in the study (N = 152, 69,7% girls). In addition to the newly developedmeasure for assessing general academic vocabulary, students completed the Mill HillVocabulary Scales, a standardized measure of general vocabulary knowledge. The results showthat the newly developed instrument for measuring general academic vocabulary knowledge isreliable and valid—it has adequate internal consistency, shows to be sensitive to the expectedage and gender differences in vocabulary, and correlates highly with the results obtained bythe Mill Hill Vocabulary Scales. This new instrument could fill the gap in academic vocabulary-related research since the currently available vocabulary assessment measures in Croatian donot focus on this specific register. More specifically, our new measure could be used to evaluatevarious types of academic vocabulary interventions in schools.