Frequency Analysis, Distribution, and Coverage of Academic Words in Materials Science Research Articles: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This study explored words in materials science research articles using New Academic Word List (NAWL) and New General Service List (NGSL) created by Browne at al. (2013) as reference lists. The objectives of this research were to explore the frequency and coverage of the NAWL and the NGSL in materials science research articles and identify frequently occurring academic words in materials science research articles that were not included in the NAWL and the NGSL. The corpus used for the analysis was compiled from 115 research articles published in five international journals related to the field of materials science. The findings revealed that the coverage of the NAWL words in the corpus of the present study was at 6.18 percent, together with the NGSL, the cumulative coverage of both word lists in the corpus of the present study was at 75.97 percent, and that there were 356 content words which did not appear in both the NAWL and the NGSL but did occur frequently in the corpus of materials science research articles. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to teaching academic vocabulary to EFL learners of materials science who read and publish academic articles in English.