Academic Vocabulary Research Articles

Teaching Academic Words With Digital Flashcards: Investigating the Effectiveness of Mobile-Assisted Vocabulary Learning for University Students.

The current study explored the effects of using digital flashcards (DFs) and mobile devices on learning academic vocabulary. The participants were 86 university students majoring in Psychology in two experimental conditions and one control group. A list of 361 core academic words frequently used in Psychology was taught to the participants using different materials, and the learning outcomes were compared across the three groups. Accordingly, the participants in the experimental group 1 (N = 31) used a DF application (i.e., NAWL builder), participants in the experimental group 2 (N = 30) used traditional materials (i.e., paper flashcards), and those in the control group were given a list of target words with their definitions. Receptive knowledge of the target words was tested before and after the treatment, and the learning outcomes were compared across the groups using one-way between-groups ANOVA. The findings of the study indicated that using DFs enhanced students’ engagement with learning their discipline-specific academic vocabulary and that experimental group 1 outperformed those participants in other learning conditions. The findings add to the existing literature on mobile-assisted vocabulary learning and provide empirical support for the effectiveness of such platforms for learning academic vocabulary. The implications of the study were discussed in terms of the affordances provided by DFs on mobile devices and corpus-based word lists for informing vocabulary learning components in teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP).

Selecting ESP reading materials. Vocabulary suitability of science magazines for English for Science teaching and learning

Bearing in mind that teachers often find themselves in a position where they have to produce their own teaching materials for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes, vocabulary profiling studies of certain genres may be of help in such situations. English for Science is an ESP field commonly taught around the world; however, despite this, the teaching resources for it are not as plentiful as the ESP teachers would like them to be. With this in mind, in this paper we study the vocabulary profile of science magazines, a genre that is generally written for non-expert audience and includes reports, news and opinions about science. We determine how complex the vocabulary of this genre is, using a corpus of approximately 230,000 running words, and define how many words are needed to reach the minimum reading comprehension level. We also determine how much high-frequency general, academic and scientific vocabulary this genre contains. Based on this, we draw conclusions on the target ESP audience these texts would be most useful for.

Repeated Exposure to Vocabulary Websites and Academic Vocabulary Retention by University Students in Japan

Repeated Exposure to Vocabulary Websites and Academic Vocabulary Retention by University Students in Japan

The Effect of CLIL Implementation on Students’ Development of English Reading Performance: An Empirical Study of Undergraduate Students in China

Previous research has found that content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is an effective method to improve undergraduate students’ English reading performance. Little is known, however, about the underlying mechanisms of such this association or factors that might strengthen or weaken these processes. Therefore, based on the framework of action research, the current study aimed to fill this gap by scrutinizing the changes in and effects of academic vocabulary size (AVS), academic self-efficacy (ASE), and learning motivation (LM) on English reading performance over a 16-week semester. A total of 202 Chinese undergraduate students (majoring in English Education) participated in this study. The results revealed the following major findings: (1) students’ AVS, ASE, LM, and English reading performance were significantly improved through CLIL implementation during this semester, (2) AVS, ASE, LM, and English reading performance were positively related to each other, (3) AVS significantly predicted students’ English reading performance, (4) ASE and LM partially mediated the effect of AVS on English reading performance. These findings contribute to the understanding of the impact of CLIL on English reading performance. Limitations and implications for educational practices are discussed.

Understanding the Role of Academic Vocabulary in Content Acquisition for Middle School Students With and Without Disabilities

Vocabulary is a prominent contributor to reading comprehension. However, little is known about how students with disabilities with lower vocabulary performance respond to Tier 1 instruction, or how their vocabulary knowledge relates to their content acquisition. To examine the differential impact of Tier 1 instruction for U.S. middle school students with disabilities and to investigate the relations among academic vocabulary, content knowledge, and reading comprehension, this study analyzed data collected in previous randomized controlled trials. Findings suggest that evidence-based Tier 1 instruction targeting academic vocabulary can help eighth graders with disabilities grow as much as students without disabilities on academic vocabulary and content reading comprehension. In addition to students’ baseline performance, learning gains in academic vocabulary significantly predicted the growth of content acquisition among students with disabilities.

Exploring the relationship between L2 vocabulary size and academic speaking

The current paper explores second language (L2) learners’ academic vocabulary size and its potential relationship to speaking in academic contexts. Our participants were 62 first language (L1) Chinese undergraduates of intermediate English level. We elicited speech samples from monologue tasks in formal class settings. We elicited vocabulary knowledge using two yes/no tests, X_Lex (Meara & Milton, 2003) and the Academic Vocabulary Size Test (AVST; Masrai & Milton, 2018), measuring general and academic vocabulary size, respectively. Our results indicate that AVST scores correlate moderately significantly with several speaking fluency measures and band-based frequency measures of vocabulary use, which outperform the explained variance of X_Lex. The mid-frequency words (K3) forming 56% of the academic words list is perhaps the primary force for the strong predictive strength of the AVST. These findings provide critical pedagogical implications for L2 academic vocabulary learning and teaching in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classrooms. The AVST emerges as a potential assessment to predict L2 speaking in academic contexts. We discuss future possible research directions with particular reference to vocabulary research in practice.

Between People and the State: The Ambivalence of Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship in India

The Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF), a flagship programme of the Ministry of Rural Development to facilitate development programme delivery in districts affected by Maoist violence, was introduced in 2011 and suspended in 2014. Though in a state of limbo at present, PMRDF created a complex template where binaries such as state/people, top-down/participatory and security/development were transcended and new ways of belonging generated, so as to make the developmental state an everyday reality in the lives of people. In this potential of PMRDF as a knowledge field to move beyond developmental platitudes, we encounter the limits of academic vocabulary to adequately capture how development matters on the ground. The article draws from critical literature on the postcolonial developmental state, secondary material on the experience of the PMRD Fellows as well as primary sources drawn from the authors’ interaction with a Fellow from Odisha. It is proposed that through PMRDF, the developmental state established its legitimacy by reaching out to people in underdeveloped regions even as it vernacularized its authority and undermined its own bureaucratic institutions. And the Fellows, far from being carriers of state power, and contrary to their representation in available literature, imagined themselves primarily as champions of people in need of development.

Promoting Academic Vocabulary Learning through Screencast Feedback

This article makes an instructional proposal for the innovative potential of a relatively new digitalized method of providing feedback using ‘screencasting’. Practical options emerging from its use appear to enhance L2 academic vocabulary learning through explicit, direct, and interactive feedback. The proposal stems from screencast feedback practices undertaken in a Zoom- facilitated tertiary L2 writing context involving undergraduate thesis advising sessions with non-native speaking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students.

THE EFFECTS OF VOCABULARY MASTERY ON ENGLISH-SPEAKING ABILITY: A META-ANALYSIS STUDY

The purpose of this meta-analysis is to analyse the effects of vocabulary mastery on English-speaking ability, which has been a extensively focused on English language teaching. A descriptive qualitative technique was utilized in this study. The data of this study consisted of 820 samples from 21 studies that focused on the correlation between students' sufficient academic vocabulary and English-speaking ability. The meta-analysis involves the studies conducted in Indonesia to draw deeper characteristics of the phenomena. The r and n were found in the data. n is the number of respondents, and r is the coefficient value. The researchers utilized five procedures to acquire the data: collecting studies or meta-analysis materials; calculating the effect size of each study; estimating the summary effect or mean effect size; analyzing the standard error; and evaluating publication bias. The data was analyzed with the help of JASP program. Because K = 21, 5K+10 Equals 115. The obtained fail-safe N value is 4727.000, with a significant target of 0.05 and p < 0.001. Because N > 5K+10 is a safe value, it is assumed that no publication bias exists in the Meta-Analysis study. In addition, the study's findings demonstrate that having an adequate academic vocabulary has a positive impact on English-speaking skills.

Think Like a Linguist: Leveraging Multilingual Students’ Expertise about Language

AbstractIn this article, we focus on a series of lessons, called Think Like a Linguist, that we designed and implemented with multilingual adolescents. These lessons were developed as an introduction to a semester‐long study on academic vocabulary and word analysis using Latin roots. Our intention in Think Like a Linguist lessons was to present concepts about language patterns and relationships by leveraging students’ diverse language backgrounds. Transcripts of lessons from one middle school class and two high school classes were inductively coded and thematically analyzed. Three main findings about students’ participation and learning are presented. First, students engaged in hypothesis‐checking and flexible thinking about language. Second, students collectively leveraged all the languages they knew for analysis. Third, lessons created the conditions for students to reflect on relations between language and power. In addition to these findings, we present major concepts introduced, examples of instructional tasks, and resources for instruction.

CRITICAL READING SKILLS, ACADEMIC VOCABULARY MASTERY, AND ARGUMENTATION WRITING SKILLS

The purpose of this study was to investigate argumentation writing skills in terms of critical reading and student academic vocabulary mastery. This research was conducted at the Department of English Education, Semester VII, STKIP Kusuma Negara Cijantung. The research method used is a correlation survey with technical regression analysis. Collecting data from research variables using test instruments. The results of this study reveal that: (1) critical reading has a positive effect on students' argumentation writing skills; (2) academic vocabulary mastery has a positive influence on students' argumentative writing skills; and (3) critical reading and mastery of academic vocabulary have a positive influence on students' argumentative writing skills. Therefore, it can be concluded that the improvement of critical reading skills, mastery of academic vocabulary supports the improvement of students' argumentation writing

Building Vocabulary Acquisition Skills in English Academic Writing with the aid of Corpus Linguistics: the UCS Writing Center Initiative

Acquisition of academic vocabulary is paramount to students’ success in academic life, as well as for the process of writing publishable papers in English so that research can be shared more broadly (NAGY; TOWNSEND 2012; PAQUOT, 2014). While in countries such as The U.S. and England the practice of offering Writing Centers for academic writing thrives, the initiative is still quite shy in Brazil (CONS 2020), though some Writing Centers around the country have recently started to operate. The aim of this paper is to report how the training activities of the Writing Center at University of Caxias do Sul – UCS Writing Center - use the Corpus Linguistics approach (BERBER-SARDINHA 2004) to enhance acquisition of academic vocabulary, therefore providing better academic writing skills to professors and students of the institution and the community it targets. The article contextualizes the Writing Center within the University and presents a series of activities which were designed based on research of Corpus Linguistics’ application to the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The activities provide specific instances of how Corpus Linguistics resources can be an invaluable asset for the improvement of vocabulary in academic writing in English, being especially useful for researchers who wish to upgrade the quality of the language used in their international publications.

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.

다의어 학술기본어휘의 전문의미 탐색과 교육적 고찰

The purpose of this study is to identify the polysemous characteristics of academic vocabulary, examine its meaning, and derive relevant educational implications. To this end, 232 academic vocabularies were selected based on Hwang Sung-eun(2017), and the vocabulary list including the basic meanings and specialized meanings for each vocabulary was prepared. As a result, it was confirmed that the academic vocabulary with one or more specialized meanings in addition to the basic meanings accounted for a majority: 88%. Since then, an expert investigation was conducted on 163 specialized meanings in seven academic fields with high frequency, and the meaning of 134 final academic vocabularies was analyzed. The analysis confirmed that having a specialized meaning in addition to the basic meaning can be managed with in Korean language education for academic purposes before entering the major. Specifically, the results suggested that if the distance between the basic meaning and the specialized meaning is close, they can be taught and learned simultaneously as per the academic field, if not, caution must be exercised when inferring the specialized meaning from the basic meaning. This study is meaningful in that it has expanded the existing discussion related to academic vocabulary to incorporate a broader perspective. (Kyung Hee University)

The Interaction of Silent Reading Rate, Academic Vocabulary, and Comprehension Among Students in Grades 2–12

AbstractThis study examined silent reading rates (SRRs) in relation to students’ estimated academic vocabulary grade levels (EVGLs) and comprehension accuracy (Comprehension Items Correct; compIC). Analyses were based on data from 288,934 students in grades 2‐12 who completed an adaptive silent reading assessment that yielded measures of the three variables of interest. Silent reading rate was measured while students read five 150‐ to 300‐word passages. Each student’s initial passage difficulty was aligned with their EVGL. Each passage was followed by five comprehension questions, such that in total, students could answer up to 25 comprehension items correctly. Two‐level Multilevel Models (MLMs) were fitted to evaluate SRR in relation to EVGL, compIC, and their interactions. The final MLM included the random intercept and three random slopes for the two level‐1 predictors (school‐mean‐centered EVGL as the focal predictor and school‐mean‐centered compIC as the moderator) and their interactions. Results indicated that: (a) the fixed effect of higher EVGL on SRR was positive and significant, (b) the fixed effect of higher compIC on SRR was negative and significant, and (c) there was a significant interaction indicating that the relationship between school‐mean‐centered EVGL and SRR grew stronger as school‐mean‐centered compIC increased. These results suggest that vocabulary knowledge and SRR increase in concert among students with good comprehension, whereas SRRs measured in the absence of good comprehension are less meaningful and may indicate inadequate skills or insufficient motivation to fully comprehend what is being read.

Congruence between Teachers’ Spoken Discourse and Students’ Vocabulary Levels: Is the Gap Too Wide?

In international schools where English is the language of learning and teaching there are many students whose first language is not English and whose low vocabulary levels inhibit their chances of taking full advantage of their education. Not only must students comprehend the high-frequency vocabulary that make up general English usage, they also need the mid-frequency and academic vocabulary used by their teachers. In this article I report on the vocabulary levels of grade 9 and 10 English as a Second Language (ESL) students at an international high school and the vocabulary profile of their teachers’ spoken discourse. Results indicated a gap between the vocabulary level of the ESL students and the vocabulary used by the teachers. A better understanding of this gap would put English teachers in a stronger position to assist students to reach the vocabulary levels necessary for them to make sense of their lessons.

Appropriateness as an aspect of lexical richness: What do quantitative measures tell us about children's writing?

Quantitative measures of vocabulary use have added much to our understanding of first and second language writing development. This paper argues for measures of register appropriateness as a useful addition to these tools. Developing an idea proposed by Durrant and Brenchley (2019) , it explores what such measures can tell us about vocabulary development in the L1 writing of school children in England and critically examines how results should be interpreted. It shows that significant patterns of discipline- and genre-specific vocabulary development can be identified for measures related to four distinct registers, though the strongest patterns are found for vocabulary associated with fiction and academic writing. Follow-up analyses showed that changes across year groups were primarily driven, not by the nature of individual words, but by the overall quantitative distribution of register-specific vocabulary, suggesting that the traditional distinction between measures of lexical diversity and lexical sophistication may not be helpful for understanding development in this context. Closer analysis of academic vocabulary showed development of distinct vocabularies in Science and English writing in response to sharply differing communicative needs in those disciplines, suggesting that development in children’s academic vocabulary should not be seen as a single coherent process. • Vocabulary appropriateness is a key aspect of lexical sophistication. • Vocabulary appropriateness can be tracked with simple quantitative measures. • Vocabulary appropriateness shows significant discipline/genre-specific development. • Development of children’s academic vocabulary is discipline-specific. • Quantitative linguistic measures must be complemented with fine-grained analysis.

Integration of Language across the curriculum (LAC) and Disciplinary Literacy (DL) at a Faculty of Education: a needs analysis

Training the Teachers of the Future: Language Policy and Literacy Development is an international collaborative project between universities in Belgium and South Africa, and is aimed at developing a comprehensive programme for the integration of Language across the curriculum (LAC) and Disciplinary Literacy (DL) in a Bachelor of Education degree. In this article, we explore the challenges faced by subject content lecturers in a Faculty of Education, in integrating a Language across the curriculum Disciplinary Literacy approach to teaching subject specific content in non-language subjects. A needs analysis was conducted using a sequential exploratory mixed method approach and 39 lecturers were surveyed. Thereafter, 15 lecturers were purposively sampled to be interviewed and observed during their lectures in order to determine how LAC was implemented in the curricula. The challenges identified in this needs analysis relate to an absence of knowhow on dealing with the language diversity of students, a lack of knowledge regarding LAC and DL, specifically related to academic reading skills and academic vocabulary acquisition, and the time constraints of developing appropriate materials for the curricula. We propose and explore a ‘Four Levels of Support’ programme for lecturers which should lead to the development of sustained Language across the curriculum and Disciplinary Literacy integration in the curricula. Keywords: Multilingualism, Language across the curriculum, Disciplinary Literacy, pre-service teachers, academic reading strategies, academic vocabulary, language support, academic literacy

Akademski vokabular u nastavi engleskog jezika struke na master akademskim studijama

This paper deals with teaching English academic vocabulary in master's degree academic studies. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which students can properly use English academic terms after various exercises applied within the English classes, as well as a correlation between the students' prior knowledge of English and their ability to use English academic terms properly. In other words, the research also aimed to determine whether the usage of certain exercises could result in a greater share of properly used English academic terms. The respondents were students of the master's degree academic studies of the study programme Agriculture of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade. The research thus comprised testing the correct use of English academic terms and correlating the obtained results with the students' proficiency. The results indicate that, in general, all students used English academic terms somewhat correctly, while the best results were achieved by those engaged in productive practice tasks, such as writing a paragraph, regardless of their English language proficiency. In addition, the analysis of variance ANOVA followed by a Post Hoc Tukey's HSD test revealed a statistically significant difference between the results of the groups of the highest and the lowest English language proficiency. The findings show a statistical significance of the correlation between students' prior knowledge and the incidence of correctly used academic terms, which can be explained by the tendency of the most proficient students to use learning strategies such as lexical inference. In addition, some hints on how to help students with lower English language proficiency to use new academic terms correctly to the same extent as students who are more proficient in English are provided. In conclusion, possible guidelines are given for teaching academic vocabulary to increase the share of properly used academic terms and possible starting points for future research.

Supplemental Material for Academic Vocabulary Volume in Elementary Grades Disciplinary Textbooks

Supplemental Material for Academic Vocabulary Volume in Elementary Grades Disciplinary Textbooks