Academic Word Research Articles

Academic Vocabulary in Teacher Talk: Challenges and Opportunities for Pedagogy

This article focuses on the opportunities and challenges afforded by teacher talk in Grade Six (10 and 11 year old students) English as an Additional Language, Maths, and Science classes in an international school context in Germany. Teachers recorded their classroom discourse for one week of classes three times in one academic year in each subject. The data shows that high frequency vocabulary prevails in all three subject areas, and Science has a higher vocabulary load than the other two subjects overall. The amount of academic vocabulary, measured by Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List, and science vocabulary, measured by Coxhead & Hirsh’s EAP Science List (2007), were lower over the teacher talk than over secondary school textbooks. This means that teacher talk is lexically easier than textbooks. Over the course of the year, the vocabulary load of the teacher talk increases in all three subjects. This article looks at opportunities and challenges presented by the lexis of teacher talk in these subjects for second and foreign language students in these classes and their teachers. Suggestions for further research are presented by way of a conclusion.

Academic Phraseology: A Key Ingredient in Successful L2 Academic Literacy

One of the weaknesses of most current academic word lists is that they fail to do justice to the large stock of multiword units that are typical of academic language. The objective of this chapter is to raise awareness of the importance of phrasal academic vocabulary. After a brief critical survey of three recently compiled phrasal academic lists, the chapter highlights the potential contribution of learner corpus data to identifying the most useful units for teaching purposes. The approach is illustrated with a case study of phrasal metadiscourse based on corpora of novice and expert native writing, and subcorpora from the International Corpus of Learner English representing L2 writers from six different mother tongue backgrounds.

Lexical diversity and the use of academic and lower frequency words in the academic writing of EFL students

AbstractThis study focuses on lexical diversity and the use of academic and lower frequency words in essays written by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students enrolled in Years 1 and 2 at the undergraduate university level. The purpose of this study is to find out the extent to which EFL students become more proficient in their use of academic and lower frequency words and make more diverse choices in their writing after one year of undergraduate university education in English. The study also compares essays written by EFL students and NS (native speaker) students to determine inter-language differences. Essays written by 62 EFL students and 198 NS students at Years 1 and 2 were analyzed for this study. The findings showed no statistically significant difference between the essays written by EFL students in Year 1 and those written in Year 2, either in terms of lexical diversity or in terms of the use of academic and lower frequency words. EFL students in both year levels had a preference for highly frequent words (words in the 1k frequency band). This is in contrast to the NS students, whose use of academic and some lower frequency words improved in Year 2. The findings also showed a statistically significant difference between the essays written by the EFL and the NS students in both year levels. The EFL students made less diverse lexical choices and used fewer words in various frequency bands than the NS students. Findings are discussed and recommendations are offered to EFL students and their educators on how to focus on these aspects of academic writing.

Students’ use of academic vocabulary in comparison to that of published writers: A corpus-driven analysis

An aspect of vocabulary research that tends to be somewhat neglected is that based on qualitative investigation. While a number of studies have considered the differences in vocabulary size between first-language (L1) and additional language (AL) speakers of English, there has been relatively little in-depth investigation into the nature of the vocabulary differences between these groups. The aim of this paper is to shed light on some of the vocabulary features of both L1 and AL student writing in relation to published writing as a benchmark. This study is based on the results of a qualitative investigation conducted using a corpus-driven approach which focused on differences in the use of academic vocabulary by both L1 and AL groups across first-, second- and third-year psychology students. The method used to identify vocabulary differences was keyness analysis, in which vocabulary items are compared on the basis of significantly different frequencies. One of the patterns that emerged serves to support the assumption that L1 students have a better grasp of academic vocabulary than AL students, as there are a greater number of grammatical, semantic and collocational idiosyncrasies in AL writing. The analysis also confirms that high achievers tend to use a broader range of academic words than low achievers. Given the evidence that a good knowledge of academic vocabulary in particular is essential for success at the level of tertiary education, the results of this study contribute to the question of what the specific vocabulary needs of undergraduate students are within the university context.

Improving academic literacy by teaching collocations

This study explores the effect of teaching collocations on building academic vocabulary and hence improving academic writing abilities. A pre-/post-test experimental design was used to analyse collocations produced in two tasks completed by the study’s participants, English majors at a university in Burundi. They were presented with a completion task and an essay-writing task before and after being exposed to a collocation-based syllabus. The syllabus was designed by selecting target words from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead 2000) and collocations from the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (Crowther, Dignen, and Lea 2002). The awareness-raising approach (cf. Barfield 2009) and an adapted version of McCarthy and O’Dell’s (2005) collocation web model were the techniques adopted for teaching collocations. The results show that participants performed significantly better on the post-test than on the pre-test in their production of collocations in both tasks. This suggests that an intervention contributes towards building students’ productive use of collocations in both cued recall and essay writing, supporting earlier findings (cf. Barfield 2009, Seesink 2007). In light of these findings, pedagogical consequences and avenues for improving higher education students’ use of collocations in writing are discussed.

Corpus-based Research on lexical Features of English Abstract in Postgraduates’ Thesis of Fashion Majors

English abstract is the accurate summarization of an article. English Abstract writing ability is a must for postgraduates of fashion majors. This paper analyzes the features of lexical usage in English abstract of fashion-major postgraduates’ thesis in terms of lexical variability and lexical density with help of corpus methodology. A small-scale corpus of 50 abstracts is built with the name English Abstract of Postgraduates’ Thesis for Fashion Majors (EAPFM), which is collected from a random sample of 126 English abstracts of postgraduates’ thesis between 2013 and 2015, 50 English abstracts of English Speaking Experts (EAESE) are taken as reference corpus. When analyzing the modal verbs, British Academic Written English (BAWE) is adopted as the reference corpus. The research result shows that the lexical coverage rate of academic words from English abstract of English-speaking experts is greater than that from fashion-major postgraduates’ English abstract. The total types of English-speaking experts’ abstracts are more than that of fashion-majors’. The frequency of the eight central modal verbs except shall from British Academic words corpus and English abstract corpus of fashion majors exhibit significant differences. What’s more, central modal verbs should and will are overused while would is less used in English abstract of postgraduates’ theses of fashion majors. Modal verb can is most frequently used by those of fashion majors because they are more self-assured for their research topics. This research is to strengthen the awareness of correctly used academic words of those postgraduates of fashion majors, and improve their academic writing ability by providing postgraduate teaching reform with the necessary data evidence.

한국어 학술어 목록의 학술 텍스트 점유율에 관한 연구

한국어 학술어 목록의 학술 텍스트 점유율에 관한 연구

Morpho-phonemic analysis boosts word reading for adult struggling readers

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar words on standardized tests of word reading, including word attack and word recognition. Findings support theories of word learning and literacy that promote explicit instruction in word analysis to increase poor readers’ linguistic awareness by revealing connections between morphological, phonological, and orthographic structures within words.

A Corpus-based Study of English Vocabulary in Art Research Articles

<p>The learning of English as a foreign language is an additional burden for art majors. This study aimed to examine high frequency words in art research articles to improve the efficiency of art majors’ English learning, especially their academic reading and writing. For this aim, the study built a corpus, analyzed data from art research articles and compared data with three base word lists. We found that the General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) had a high coverage in our corpus, and there was a different high frequency word order in the Art Research Article Corpus (ARAC). These findings provide some implications for teaching English for art majors. </p>

분야별 일반어휘, 학문어휘 및 기타어휘 비율 비교 분석- 경영학, 생물학, 영어교육학 연구논문을 중심으로 -

분야별 일반어휘, 학문어휘 및 기타어휘 비율 비교 분석- 경영학, 생물학, 영어교육학 연구논문을 중심으로 -

공학영어 어휘 목록 개발

This paper is intended to develop a word list that helps engineering students with engineering vocabulary frequently used across different disciplines. For this goal, an Engineering English Corpus (EEC) including around 4,000,000 running words was compiled and constructed from 40 textbooks commonly used in 8 engineering disciplines: chemical, computer, electrical, electronics, environmental, industrial, materials science and mechanical. This paper identified a total of 1,170 word families comprised of General Service List (GSL), Academic Word List (AWL) and Technical Word List (TWL) through two criteria such as frequency and range. In detail, the cut-off frequency of GSL and AWL was more than 100 times and the range was at least 10 times in all 8 disciplines exclusive of TWL. The result of the analysis showed that 1) not all words in GSL and AWL were used frequently in the EEC; 2) GSL, AWL and TWL could be learned and taught regardless of the pre-determined order; 3) the created engineering English word list could meet the basic need of engineering students.

Teaching English-Spanish cognate-recognition strategies through the Américas Book Award-winners and honor picture books

ABSTRACTCognates are words that are the same or nearly the same orthographically and semantically in English and Spanish. The majority of the more than 20,000 cognates are academic vocabulary words comprised of Latin and Greek roots and affixes. Several thousand cognates can be found in the picture books that have earned the Américas Book Award, which was established to honor quality multicultural books that portray Latino cultures in a positive light. The authors present lessons for teaching primary school Latino ELLs about cognates through the Américas Award picture books, as they educate their students about their rich Latino cultures.

English for Academic Skills Independence: Focus on Vocabulary.

What does it mean to know a word? When asked this question, students often appear flummoxed, lacking either the metalanguage or linguistic knowledge to articulate an insightful response. This paper argues that lexical awareness, coupled with an extensive vocabulary are essential components of the multiple academic literacies required of students. In order to support students’ vocabulary acquisition and understanding, Auckland University of Technology’s Student Learning: Puna Aronui (SL) has developed a targeted English language programme called English for Academic Skills Independence (EASI) with a clearly foregrounded vocabulary component. So, what does it mean to know a word? Using Nation’s (2001) framework we take as our point of departure the tripartite structure of form, meaning and usage. Under the heading of form, the main focus is on parts of speech and morphology (derivational roots and affixes). Under the heading of meaning, we consider first denotative and connotative meanings, touching on notions of concept development, then move on to explore sense relations (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, metonymy). Under the heading of usage, our approach is informed by recent developments in corpus linguistics which yield frequency information leading to resources such as Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List; also included under the heading of usage are syntactic and lexico-grammatical considerations such as collocation and colligation. This paper will outline the theoretical approach taken in developing the vocabulary component of the EASI programme and report on feedback from both students and the teaching team. A strong sensitivity to vocabulary within academic discourses is fundamental to academic literacies development at tertiary level.

Looking deeper into academic citations through network analysis: popularity, influence and impact

Google Scholar (GS) has progressively emerged as a tool which “provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources.” As a free tool that provides citation metrics, GS has opened the academic word to a much larger audience, according to an open information philosophy. GS’ profiles are largely used not only to have a quick look at the authors and their works but, more and more often, as a “de facto” metric to quickly evaluate the research impact. This process looks unstoppable and discussing about its fairness, advantages and disadvantages, as well as about social implications is out of the scope of this paper. We rather prefer to (1) briefly discuss the changes and the innovation that GS has introduced and to (2) propose possible improvements for analysis on academic citations. Our methods are aimed at considering a GS profile in its proper context, providing a social perspective on academic citations: Although maintaining a fundamentally quantitative focus, novel approaches, based on complex network analysis, distinguish between a research impact on the authors’ research network and a more general impact on the scientific community.

Construction and Interpretation Of Corpus-Based English Poetry Vocabulary Profile

Vocabulary Profilers (VPrs) are deeply rooted in pedagogical purposes. The current investigation, however, uses the Classic and Compleat VPrs to: 1) determine the distribution and content of vocabulary in an English poetry corpus 2) explain differences in the constituents of the vocabulary profile (VP), 3) explore the role of language users in constructing the VP. The corpus includes Extended Corpus (EC: 1.363.225 words), Micro Corpus (MC: 43.200 words) from thirty-six poets, and two poems translated into Arabic. The main results show that Types, Offlist words, Academic and Anglo-Saxon words outline the VP, and that the number of Types and the size of the Individual Mental Lexicon constitute the main features of the translator’s VP. The paper concludes that the poet’s construction of the poetry VP undergoes multilayer interpretation by the reader/analyst and the translator, who utilize their socio-environmental context to pin down the semantic potential of the VP anew.

Investigation of Text Readability of the College Scholastic Ability Test and High School English Textbooks Based on Lexical Familarity and Syntactic Complexity

The aim of this research is to suggest perspectives of development of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and English textbooks by analyzing text readability of the CSAT and English textbooks based on measuring of lexical familarity and syntactic complexity beyond the traditional readability measures. Overall, the CSAT was shown to be more lexically difficult and syntactically more complex than the English textbooks reviewed. In addition, the English textbooks fluctuated much more in their vocabulary frequency level and contained a smaller amount of academic words. In order for text readability to be well-balanced when developing the CSAT and English textbooks, the CSAT first needs to be developed not resorting to EBS-CSAT prep books mainly focusing on solving test items but based upon English textbooks which were laboriously developed through the rigorous procedures authorized under the national curriculum. Secondly, more academic words need to be included in the future development of textbooks to help Korean students with their future higher education. Lastly, it is necessary to employ procedures investigating lexical familarity and syntactic complexity when developing the CSAT and textbooks.

Using Academic Word Lists to Support Disciplinary Literacy Development

AbstractAn elementary mathematics coach describes her process and instructional strategies for using academic word lists to support students’ disciplinary literacy development. Using teacher coaching, the author explores methods for classroom teachers to embed and authentically integrate best practices in vocabulary instruction to support disciplinary literacy development. The author also provides classroom examples and student work to support recommended instructional strategies.

A Corpus-Based Evaluation on Two Different English for Nursing Purposes (ENP) Course Books

It is difficult for most of the second language learners in Malaysia to function proficiently in English language due to limited vocabulary knowledge. It has also been challenging for TESL graduates to fit in as ENP teachers due to the lack of specialized vocabulary knowledge in nursing field. Thus, a course books has always been a highly dependable aid in facilitating the teaching and learning in an ENP classroom. The objective of this research is to identify the possible pedagogical aspects of two ENP commercial course books (Oxford English for Careers Nursing 1” (OEFCN1) written by Tony Grice and “Nursing Your English Second Edition” (NYE) by Siti Salina Salim and Mazura Mastura Muhammad) in socializing learners into their discourse communities. The present research looks at the extent of vocabulary coverage in comparison with General Service List (GSL), Academic Word List (AWL), Nursing Education Word List (NEWL) and the 2,000 most frequent nursing words. These course books were photocopied, scanned and converted into computer text files before they were analyzed using WordSmith 4.0 as it is able to provide elemental knowledge on the vocabulary coverage in both course books. The results indicated that both books showed significant result in terms of their coverage based on the three word lists. On the other hand, it is proven that the 2000 most frequent nursing words wordlist is not able to cover as much tokens as compared to GSL, AWL and NEWL combined.

Deliberate Learning Of Second Language (L2) Vocabulary: Research-Based Guidelines

<p>This article is devoted to overviewing several current studies on L2 vocabulary learning, especially those aimed at investigating and exploring the ways in which deliberate vocabulary learning would be best facilitated, and thus would increase learning. It is argued that knowledge of vocabulary is fundamental in all language use, and becomes an essential part to master second language. A large amount of vocabulary is required to use English both receptively and productively: 8000 – 9000 word families needed in order to adequately comprehend a wide range of written discourse (Nation, 2006), and 2000 – 3000 word families required to get sufficient comprehension of spoken discourse (van Zeeland & Schmitt, 2012). Knowing a lexical item entails several aspects of word knowledge i.e., form, meaning, and use, each of which is further comprised of several sub-aspects of word knowledge. In addition, vocabulary learning is incremental in nature. Taken all these into account, there should be a component of deliberate vocabulary learning in language teaching, regardless of the preferred teaching methods being applied. Most importantly, deliberate learning of vocabulary should be intensively focused on lexical items which fall into both the new GSL word list (Brezina & Gablasova, 2015) and the new AWL word list (Coxhead, 2000). Finally, reviewing current studies on L2 vocabulary learning results in several research-based guidelines for deliberate or intentional vocabulary learning which are discussed throughout the rest of this article.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>vocabulary learning, vocabulary size, word knowledge, high-frequency words, academic words, deliberately-learning-vocabulary guidelines</em><em> <strong></strong></em></p>

Frequency Analysis of Academic Words in Malaysian Secondary School English as Second Language Textbooks: A Corpus Study

The development of Academic Word List (AWL) has raised awareness on the usefulness of general academic vocabulary among English as second language (ESL) learners especially in expanding their vocabulary size as well as constructing strong academic language foundation for their university education. This highlights the relevancy and necessity of AWL embedment into ESL reading materials such as textbooks frequently used by learners in their language studies prior to the start of their tertiary study. In this study, we conducted a corpus-based research on the current English language textbooks used in Malaysian secondary schools in order to inspect whether similar standing on the importance of academic words were shared by the authors of the textbooks through the inclusion of the AWL into the textbooks corpus. Using the Range software, the data analysis revealed that 480 (84%) out of 570 AWL words were found in the corpus. However the findings on the frequency of each of the AWL words showed that only 237 (41.6%) word families occurred at least 10 times while the rest consist of 333 word families (58.4%) are found either occurring on average frequency between five to nine times, between one to four times or not found at all in the textbook corpus. These findings indicate the lack of frequency of academic words in the Malaysian English Language Textbooks corpus. Without adequate exposure to academic words, students would not be able to acquire the words fully before the start of their undergraduate studies. Thus, the current textbooks must to be updated to meet the learners’ academic words needs.