Developing a frequent technical words list for finance: A hybrid approach

Abstract

Technical words are words whose meanings are related to one specific and specialized subject area, such as Business English (BE). Knowledge of the semantic nuances and pragmatic uses of these technical words is crucial to developing one's competence in a particular field. Thus, developing a list of frequent technical words in a given area is a necessary resource for those who are teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The present study develops such a list of frequently used technical words in the field of finance by adopting a combined method (Keyword Analysis and a modified rating scale). The resulting list contains 979 words crucial to finance, which are categorized into 569 word families. These 979 words are listed in both the General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) (413 and 291 words, respectively). This study demonstrates that a combined Keyword Analysis-rating scale method can more effectively identify high-frequency technical words than can either of these methods used alone. Hybrid methods are recommended for creating future BE vocabulary lists to overcome the inherent flaws of individual analytic methods.