Towards the Development of an Academic Word List for Applied Linguistics Research Articles

Abstract

Academic vocabulary, as the most challenging aspect of language learning in EAP and ESP contexts, has received much attention in the last few decades (e.g. Laufer, 1988; Sutarsyah, et al., 1994; Laufer and Nation, 1999; Coxhead, 2000; Nation, 2001a, 2001b; Wang et al., 2008; Martinez et al., 2009). The major attainments of these studies were identifying the academic vocabularies in the form of some wordlists called for all (Coxhead, 2000), or for some specific fields of study (Wang et al., 2008). Along with these studies and because of the paucity of studies in the field of Applied Linguistics, this study tries to establish an academic wordlist specific for the field of Applied Linguistics. Using frequency and range as the criteria for word form selection, this study identified 773 academic word types. A total of 573 (74.12%) academic words found in the corpus overlapped with the words in Coxhead’s AWL (2000). Therefore, Applied Linguistics teachers and students should pay special attention to this wordlist. From these findings it is concluded that (1) academic words play an important role in academic texts; therefore, acquisition of them seems to be essential for language learners and users; (2) material and syllabus designers and teachers’ direct attention to these words can lead to a better understanding of these words; hence, students’ development in their writing and reading.