Precision (and Accuracy) in Academic Written and Spoken English. An Exercise in Awareness-Raising

Abstract

This study stems from the present author’s observations that the high-frequency academic word precise, poses a serious problem to advanced Polish students of English, who tend to use it interchangeably with another academic word accurate. Given the importance of precision and accuracy in academic research and the importance of common terminological ground in academic communication, a study has been launched into the usage of precise in academic English. The study based on two British Academic English corpora investigates the lexeme in terms of a number of criteria and demonstrates that the semantics of the lexeme is context-specific and some of the contexts can be shared by precise and accurate.