Academic Vocabulary List Research Articles

Academic vocabulary for L2 argumentative writing: Perspectives from Chinese university EFL learners

Academic vocabulary plays a critical role in L2 argumentative writing. Recent studies have specifically examined the importance of academic vocabulary and academic word lists for EAP and ESP learning and research. However, it is unclear how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners perceive academic vocabulary and the challenges they face using this vocabulary in university argumentative essays. The present study adopted a case study approach to investigate Chinese university EFL learners’ perceptions of, and problems with, academic vocabulary in an argumentative writing task. Five fourth-year advanced EFL learners were assigned to write an IELTS essay before participating in a one-on-one interview. The results indicated that while participants had a heightened awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, they lacked a comprehensive understanding of this construct. More specifically, they knew little about the academic register, and their academic vocabulary size was small. Consequently, various problems arose in relation to the use of academic words in their argumentative writing, including word choice and the over-reliance on Chinese word meaning and word spelling knowledge. The EFL learners also reported that the biggest challenge to their academic writing was the lack of academic collocation knowledge. These findings have pedagogical implications for understanding the academic lexical problems facing Chinese EFL learners in their academic writing.

The Dimensionality of Lexical Features in General, Academic, and Disciplinary Vocabulary

ABSTRACT Purpose There are many aspects of words that can influence our lexical processing, and the words we are exposed to influence our opportunities for language and reading development. The purpose of this study is to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the lexical challenges and opportunities students face. Method We explore the latent relationships of word features across three established word lists: the General Service List, Academic Word List, and discipline-specific word lists from the Academic Vocabulary List. We fit exploratory factor models using 22 non-behavioral, empirical measures to three sets of vocabulary words: 2,060 high-frequency words, 1,051 general academic words, and 3,413 domain-specific words. Results We found Frequency, Complexity, Proximity, Polysemy, and Diversity were largely stable factors across the sets of high-frequency and general academic words, but that the challenge facing learners is structurally different for domain-specific words. Conclusion Despite substantial stability, there are important differences in the latent lexical features that learners encounter. We discuss these results and provide our latent factor estimates for words in our sample.

A corpus-based study of vocabulary in massive open online courses (MOOCs)

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide rich academic content to learners around the world. However, understanding such content is challenging to second-language learners. Given the importance of vocabulary knowledge to comprehension, this study constructed a 10.2-million-word corpus of MOOCs from four disciplinary areas (engineering, humanities and arts, science and math, and social sciences), and examined (a) the lexical demands of MOOCs, (b) the coverage of general and discipline-specific academic vocabulary lists in MOOCs, and (c) the extent to which these lists helped learners with MOOCs' lexical demands. The results show that – together with proper nouns, marginal words, transparent compounds, and acronyms – the most frequent 3,000 and 4,000 word families of general English respectively provide 90% and 95% coverage of the corpus, indicating that MOOCs are as lexically challenging as university lectures. Also, because both general and discipline-specific academic vocabulary lists provide high coverage of MOOCs, studying them can lower students' learning burdens and help them achieve higher coverage of MOOCs than learning words by frequency. Lastly, based on learners’ existing vocabulary knowledge and target disciplines, this study provides pedagogical recommendations to teachers on how to employ general and discipline-specific academic word lists as vocabulary support for EAP students.

Measuring the Academic Vocabulary Size of University Students in Nepal

Students’ knowledge of academic vocabulary is a crucial aspect of learning English as a second or foreign language at the university level. Using academic vocabulary lists could be a valuable resource in teaching and learning vocabulary. This study measured the academic vocabulary size of Nepalese university students using Schmitt’s (2010) Academic Vocabulary Level Test Version 2 as a data collection tool. The participants were 62 adult EFL students. The data were collected online via Google Forms. The results showed that the average academic vocabulary size of the students was 435 (76.3%) words out of 570 word-families in the academic vocabulary word list. The results also showed that the students had heterogeneous knowledge with varying degree of academic vocabulary achievement (M = 22.02, SD= 8.6 and Coefficient of Variation = 39.1%). The results of the study suggest that English education students at the university level in Nepal need explicit instruction, concentration, and practice to gain mastery over academic vocabulary with less variation of knowledge in their academic vocabulary achievement.

AKADEMSKI VOKABULAR U APSTRAKTIMA STUDENATA MASTER STUDIJA NA POLjOPRIVREDNOM FAKULTETU

This study examines the proportion of word families from the Academic Word List (AWL) compiled by Coxhead (2000) in abstracts written by Master’s degree stu- dents at the Faculty of Agriculture in Belgrade. The novelty of our study is that we focus on student writing in the field of agriculture and on abstracts as a type of assignment. One of the aims was to find out whether the proportion of academic terms used by the students correlated with their CEFR level, and another one was to determine the most frequent word families. The proportion of all word families from the list in the corpus consisting of abstracts was calculated, as well as the number of tokens for each of them and their relative frequency. There was no correlation between the students’ CEFR level and the proportion of academic terms used in their texts. The proportion of studied word families was limited, and the analysis of the meaning and collocations of the 10 most frequent word families indicates a specific use by the students of agriculture. These findings question the applicability of general academic vocabulary lists to all disciplines and suggest the creation of a specific list for academic writing instruction in the field of agriculture. The results of this study may be useful for improving the teaching of English to mixed-ability classes at universities. A broader contribution could be the better use of academic vocabulary in students’ papers, which correlates with their overall academic success.

An Analysis of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Sri Lankan IT Undergraduates: Frequency, Technology Usage and Performance at a Formative Assessment

Learning vocabulary is an integral part in language acquisition and acquisition of academic vocabulary is a determinant for the success in an academic context. Therefore, many studies have been conducted to formulate academic vocabulary lists and identifying vocabulary learning strategies. This study seeks to explore the vocabulary learning strategies employed by IT undergraduates when studying academic vocabulary and to examine their performance on academic vocabulary related questions at the mid-term examination which is one of their formative assessments. The sample of the study includes 276 first year IT undergraduates who follow the module English for Academic Purposes in a Sri Lankan non-state university. A questionnaire is used as the research tool to obtain data from the sample and the result of the formative exam is used to examine the performance related to academic vocabulary. According to the data analysis, most of the students often use either monolingual or bilingual dictionary as a strategy for the discovery of a new word meaning. This is more emphasized as they have mentioned that they prefer using dictionary apps as a vocabulary strategy using online. A significant number of students study the spelling, meaning and form of a word and ask for help from their friends as strategies for consolidating a word once it has been encountered. When comparing the marks obtained for the vocabulary related questions at the exam, it is noted that the students have obtained less marks to the question in which they had to replace the underlined word/phrases with a more academic alternative. Thus, students need to adopt more effective strategies to acquire mastery of academic vocabulary. Moreover, they should reflect on the current strategies used by them.

Evaluating word lists against word frequency, lexical age-of-acquisition and concreteness

This study investigated the efficacy of three criteria, i.e., word frequency, lexical age-of-acquisition (lexical AoA), and concreteness, in evaluating English word lists constructed primarily for the purpose of second-language acquisition. The word lists chosen for evaluation were the New General Service List (New-GSL) and the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL), which are utilized internationally in second-language research, and they were compared against two English word lists that have been widely adopted in China. Statistical analyses revealed that word frequency and lexical AoA were collectively effective in classifying word lists constructed for speakers of different levels of proficiency, e.g., the New-GSL vs the AVL. Furthermore, each of the three criteria appeared to independently qualify the differences between words lists. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating cognitive factors, e.g., lexical AoA and concreteness, into second-language research and theories, which help to specify the characteristics and pinpoint the limitations of word lists in light of the underlying mechanisms of language acquisition and development.

The effect of lexical tools and applications on L2 vocabulary learning: a case of English academic core words

ABSTRACT This study explored the effects of three types of lexical tools (MOOCs, E-dictionaries, and lexical concordancers) and three types of lexical applications (technology-mediated communication-based applications (TMCA), Anki as an e-flashcard application, and WordUp as a dedicated lexical application) on learning academic core words among a sample of 74 EFL students in six groups. Furthermore, the effectiveness of lexical applications was compared in terms of being tutor-based form-focused or tool-based meaning-focused. After the treatments that included 24 60-minute sessions, students answered a research-made test developed based on the 85 words selected from Gardner and Davies’ ([2014]. “A New Academic Vocabulary List.” Applied Linguistics 35 (3): 305–327) academic vocabulary list (AVL). Data analysis using one-way ANOVA and independent-sample t-test indicated that vocabulary learning occurred more through lexical applications than lexical tools. MOOCs and lexical concordancers roughly equal outperformed the e-dictionaries group. Among the lexical applications, WordUp attained better results than TMCA and Anki Flashcard Program. Anki showed more gains in academic vocabulary learning than TMCA. Furthermore, the tutor form-focused application (WorUP) was more effective than the tool-based meaning-focused applications (TMCA+ Anki Groups). The findings of this investigation imply that language teachers can use more lexical applications to enhance the knowledge of academic core words.

Measuring depth of academic vocabulary knowledge

In second language (L2) vocabulary studies there is continuing interest in tests of depth of vocabulary knowledge, measuring various aspects of word knowledge other than just the form–meaning link that is the focus of breadth (or size) tests. This study aimed to explore new formats that could be used as diagnostic tools for assessing depth of academic vocabulary knowledge. The participants were 222 first-year students taking a programme of English for academic purposes (EAP) at a university in Vietnam. The depth measure was a newly developed test of a sample of words from Gardner and Davies’ Academic Vocabulary List, including sub-tests on receptive knowledge of synonyms, collocations and word parts. The participants also took the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test as a breadth measure, as well as a translation test. Results showed that most of the students had a relatively limited knowledge of general English vocabulary. There was a moderate correlation between the breadth and depth tests. The students had the best knowledge of synonyms, followed by word parts and then collocations. The collocation and word parts sub-tests included a Not Sure option to discourage blind guessing, and analyses of responses to this option offered useful insights into the students’ test-taking behaviour.

Academic Language Register In Arabic Articles From Al-Majallah Al-Urduniyyah Fi Al-Ulum Al-Tarbawiyyah

This study falls under discourse analysis studies, focusing on using the academic register in Arabic research articles. Language register refers to using a form of language in a specific context. The use of language register varies according to the structure of discourse and field. For example, language register is used in scientific discourse, entertainment, politics, and health. Using accurate and appropriate scientific language in terms of vocabulary can demonstrate the strength of an article in reporting research results. The current study was conducted to identify the use of the academic register in Arabic via research articles focusing on academic vocabulary. This study was prompted by several issues, such as the weakness of students and researchers in producing quality research reports from the aspect of scientific writing, in addition to the limited number of studies about the academic language register in Arabic. This study was descriptive, using a qualitative approach and content analysis techniques. The unit analyzed was academic vocabulary words taken from six journal articles on Arabic language issues. All articles were written by native Arabic speakers and published by the Arabic journal “al-Majallah al-Urduniyyah fi al-Ulum al-Tarbawiyyah” in Jordan. The academic language register was analyzed using the approach of Ure and Ellis (1977). It was based on the 100 academic vocabulary words (Academic Vocabulary List or AVL) generated by Gardner and Davies (2014). The study's results found that all the suggested words from the AVL were used by Arabic-language researchers in writing their articles with various frequencies. Out of the 100 words selected from the AVL, 71 to 90 vocabulary words were used in each article. The most used word was the word دِرَاسَة which appeared 464 times, but the word شَجَّعَ appeared only 3 times, the lowest frequency.

A Basic Study on the Development of Essential Korean Academic Vocabulary Collection Using Meta-metering

In this study, a basic discussion was conducted on the development of the “Essential Korean Academic Vocabulary Collection” necessary for teaching and learning major academic vocabulary that foreign students must know for academic performance before entering their major. Since there was no official academic vocabulary list, six appropriate academic vocabulary lists were meta-metered to secure sufficient vocabulary, and the source redundancy and grade information of each vocabulary were scored and evaluated. A total of 4,475 vocabulary words were listed and documented by meta-metering, and the importance was evaluated with 1,154 vocabulary roots excluding 971 sources per person. As a result of the evaluation, 550 of 1,154 roots with 50 or more points were selected as the main heading, and roots with 40 or more points were suggested to be additionally collected as needed if possible. Next, a discussion was conducted on the microstructure setting and technical method of the essential academic vocabulary collection. It was suggested that the microstructure of the collection could be largely composed of a heading presentation part, as well as a word family and usage presentation part. This study is meaningful in that it drew a blueprint for the development of a vocabulary collection that can use academic vocabulary for actual teaching and learning based on existing research for the selection of academic vocabulary. In particular, it is meaningful in that it has dealt with the areas that should be considered when it comes to actual development, and has also increased the possibility of this by analyzing and proposing plans from various angles.

Academic English verbs across disciplines: A corpus study and its implications

Using Davies's (2008-) Corpus of Contemporary American English's academic English section as data, this study investigates, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the cross-discipline usage patterns of the 554 verbs from Gardner and Davies's (2014) core Academic Vocabulary List (AVL). The results of a series of statistical analyses (e.g., Chi-square and cluster analysis) indicate that 41% of the verbs displayed a low dispersion across the disciplines with some verbs used mostly in a few of the disciplines and that the disciplines' verb usage patterns form distinctive hierarchical clusters. Based on the results, the verbs are organized in three manners (lists), with one containing the normed frequencies of the verbs in each of the nine disciplines, one composed of the verbs ranked in order of their frequencies in each discipline, and one consisting of the verbs organized into three bands based on their dispersion measures (i.e., general academic verbs, borderline general academic verbs, and discipline-specific verbs). Furthermore, qualitative analyses have identified the structural classes of the verbs and uncovered some verbs' cross-register meaning variations. Pedagogical/research implications are also discussed.

Building a corpus-based academic vocabulary list of four languages

Building a corpus-based academic vocabulary list of four languages

Academic lexical coverage in TED talks and academic lectures

The coverage of academic lexis is compared in a TED talk corpus (2,483 talks, 5,068,781 words) and a corpus of Yale University lectures (708 lectures, 5,523,791 words). Academic lexis is defined by the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner & Davies, 2014), and the Academic Spoken Word List (Dang et al., 2017). In all cases Mann–Whitney U tests found lectures had significantly higher coverage, with small effect sizes for lexis. This difference was smaller for academic tagged TED talks (n = 1379). When like-for-like disciplines were compared, lectures typically had greater coverage than their TED talk counterparts. An analysis of the cumulative coverage of types demonstrated a lower representation of the less frequent academic types in TED talks. A combined ratio and minimum frequency measure identified academic types which distinguish the genres. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

When a bug is not a bug: An introduction to the computer science academic vocabulary list

This article presents the Computer Science Academic Vocabulary List (CSAVL), a pedagogical tool intended for use by English-for-specific-purpose educators and material developers. A 3.5-million-word corpus of academic computer science texts was developed in order to produce the CSAVL. The CSAVL draws from the improved methodologies used in the creation of recent lemma-based word lists such as the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) and the Medical Academic Vocabulary List (MAVL) (Lei & Liu, 2016), which take into account the discipline-specific meanings of academic vocabulary. The CSAVL provides specific information for each entry, including part of speech and CS-specific meanings in order to provide users with clues as to how each item is used within the context of academic CS. Based on the analyses performed in this study, the CSAVL was found to be a more efficient tool for reaching an minimal level of academic CS reading comprehension than the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000), or the combination of the AWL with the Computer Science Word List (CSWL) (Minshall, 2013).

Exploring polysemy in the Academic Vocabulary List: A lexicographic approach

The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) is a valuable resource for EAP teachers and students as it identifies potential lexical learning/teaching targets. This study enhances the AVL's pedagogical usefulness by identifying polysemous lemmas in it. Polysemous AVL lemmas are operationalised as those with more than one definition in two lexicographic resources, the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners' Dictionary and WordNet. This study also examines a theoretical issue, the relationship between the number of meaning senses of AVL lemmas and their frequency in an academic-English corpus. To this end, correlations were calculated between the numbers of AVL lemmas' meaning definitions listed in both lexicographic resources and their frequency in the COCA-Academic corpus. 34.38% of the 2673 AVL lemmas included in both lexicographic resources, excluding homonyms, are polysemous. Most (66.05%) come from the most frequent 1000 AVL lemmas. The number of meaning definitions of AVL lemmas and their frequency are positively correlated. This correlation is non-linear, i.e., low-frequency words tend to be monosemous but beyond a frequency threshold, word definitions increase as word frequency increases. Implications for future research and teaching are discussed.

A COMPARISON OF THE ACADEMIC WORD LIST AND THE ACADEMIC VOCABULARY LIST: SHOULD THE AVL REPLACE THE AWL?

In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can still be considered as “the best list” (Nation, 2001, p. 12) for improving academic words, or whether its counterpart is reasonably “the most current, accurate, and comprehensive list” (Gardner & Davies, 2014, p. 325). The comparison was made in terms of twelve aspects: corpus size, types of corpus texts, sources of corpus texts, text balance, disciplines included, counting unit, wordlist items, method for excluding highfrequency words, minimum frequency, method for excluding technical words, sequence of list items and lexical coverage. The comparison reveals that the AVL is far from complete and cannot replace the AWL. The results of the comparison can have implications for practitioners and course developers.

Academic vocabulary in an EAP course: Opportunities for incidental learning from printed teaching materials developed in-house

Teaching materials developed in-house are commonly used in EAP courses; however, research on their linguistic content, which can have important pedagogical implications, is scarce. This study examines the occurrence and repetition of general academic vocabulary, operationalised as the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014), in the printed teaching materials developed in-house and used in a presessional EAP course at a UK university. The course was divided into three modules and taught over five weeks. At the end of each week, teachers provided us with photocopies of the printed teaching materials they had used. A corpus was compiled from the printed materials of each module. The results show that 846 AVL lemmas (i.e., 28.07% of the lemmas in the AVL) appeared in the materials. They were not equally distributed among the three modules and only 90 AVL lemmas overlapped across modules. The results also show that the average repetition rate of AVL lemmas in the materials was unlikely to lead to the incidental development of recall knowledge from exposure to these materials alone. Recommendations are made for the development of in-house EAP materials and teaching activities that increase students' exposure to academic vocabulary and facilitate its learning.

Receptive Knowledge of Nouns and Collocations and the Impact on English Skill Performances

Interests in examining the roles of receptive vocabulary knowledge and collocational knowledge and competence on EFL learners’ proficiency have grown considerably; yet, the extent of how EFL learners’ receptive knowledge of noun, verb-noun collocations, and noun-preposition collocations impact their English skill performances is still insufficiently researched. To address such gaps, this study specifically explored Thai EFL learners’ receptive knowledge of nouns and collocations and its impact on English skill performances. Three types of receptive vocabulary tests were created by using high-frequency nouns taken from the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL), which became the basis of selecting verb-noun lexical collocations and noun-preposition grammatical collocations. The tests were validated by a pilot study, then distributed to the 2 nd year students ( N = 135; 28 males; 107 females) at Walailak University, Thailand. The results of the tests were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, ANOVA, and multiple linear regressions. It was revealed that Thai EFL learners, who participated in this study, had insufficient knowledge of noun, either in form or in meaning, and encountered complexities in identifying lexical and grammatical collocations. Receptive knowledge significantly predicted learners’ performance in reading tasks. The findings of this study indicate the urgent need to include collocations into English teaching as Thai EFL learners seem unable to acquire them on their own; besides, the insufficient knowledge of the form and meaning of nouns may imply a deeper problem in Thai EFL learners’ proficiency in grammatical structure. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that English teaching and learning materials, e.g., textbooks and modules, as well as course design and instruction at the university level in Thailand need to include explicitly integrated lessons of nouns (form and meaning) and collocations to facilitate the development of knowledge in such areas.

Word lists and the role of academic vocabulary use in high stakes speaking assessments

Abstract The current study explored the extent to which academic vocabulary lists could meet the lexical demands of academic speaking assessments. Indices of word use from lists of academic and general vocabulary were used to predict speaking scores on three TOEFL tasks. The results found weak associations between list-item use and response scores that varied by task. Independent response scores were associated with the use of specialized vocabulary from the first level of the Academic Spoken Word List. Integrated campus situation response scores were most strongly associated with the use of unique words from the Academic Word List. Integrated academic course response scores were associated with the use of more sophisticated general vocabulary. Although the findings provide some support for the use of academic vocabulary lists in speaking assessment preparation, the weak effect sizes point to the need to develop lists of academic vocabulary specific to academic speaking and assessment.