Abstract
This paper examines students’ use of vocabulary in English as a foreign language (EFL) in academic writing. However necessary, the specific vocabulary used by students in academic EFL settings has not received sufficient attention. Thirty-one EFL students at a Costa Rican public university participated in this study, which was conducted over the course of a year. The researcher collected data from participants’ final research papers and used specialized software to determine their vocabulary usage. Data analyses indi- cate that: 1) lexical variety is above average, 2) students’ academic vocabulary is high but does not include all the possible subtypes, 3) students range between a C1 and C2 English level in the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP) distribution, and 4) metadiscourse markers are used but highly repetitive in students’ papers. These conclusions are con- sistent with the reviewed literature; they imply a high degree of variation across popula- tions. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that direct instruction may broaden students’ lexicon. These findings should serve as a springboard for implementing new teaching strategies that stimulate a curricular evaluation of the study plan.
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