Abstract
This study investigates the idea that knowledge of specialist subject vocabulary can make a significant and measurable impact on academic performance, separate from and additional to the impact of general and academic vocabulary knowledge. It tests the suggestion of Hyland and Tse (TESOL Quarterly, 41:235–253, 2007) that specialist vocabulary should be given more attention in teaching. Three types of vocabulary knowledge, general, academic and a specialist business vocabulary factors, are tested against GPA and a business module scores among students of business at a college in Egypt. The results show that while general vocabulary size has the greatest explanation of variance in the academic success factors, the other two factors - academic and a specialist business vocabulary - make separate and additional further contributions. The contribution to the explanation of variance made by specialist vocabulary knowledge is double that of academic vocabulary knowledge.
Highlights
IntroductionIntroduction and backgroundIn the course of developing sufficient ability for successful study in a foreign language, the importance of growing a foreign language lexicon of an appropriate size is beyond dispute
Introduction and backgroundIn the course of developing sufficient ability for successful study in a foreign language, the importance of growing a foreign language lexicon of an appropriate size is beyond dispute
The current study This study investigates the idea that specialist subject vocabulary knowledge can have a significant and measurable impact on academic performance, separate from and additional to the impact of general and academic vocabulary knowledge
Summary
Introduction and backgroundIn the course of developing sufficient ability for successful study in a foreign language, the importance of growing a foreign language lexicon of an appropriate size is beyond dispute. Catalán and Fransisco (2008) reflect, nearly 100 years later, in a study of modern textbooks, that writers continue to make idiosyncratic choices as to the number of words presented, and the selection of words To help clarify this difficulty, Nation (2001) identifies four different types of vocabulary: Masrai et al Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education (2021) 6:8. For general language skills a learner will need good command of the most frequent vocabulary, and Nation is thinking in terms of the most frequent 2000 words These words are important because of their contribution to coverage, and are generally thought to comprise about 80% of the content of relatively normal texts both in English (Coxhead, 2000) and in other languages such as French (Tschichold, 2012). Both Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovsky (2010) and Nation (2006) suggest that knowledge of the most frequent 8000 or 9000 words are needed for coverage of about 98%, which is needed for fluent communication in writing. Nation (2006) suggests a slightly smaller number, 6000 to 7000, might be needed for fluent understanding of spoken language
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