Louis Rogers
www.macmillanskillful.com/
Overview
 Defining academic vocabulary
 The Academic Word List
 The Academic Keyword List
 Beyond individual words
 Vocabulary and reading
Academic vocabulary
 There is no exact boundary when defining academic
language; it falls toward one end of a continuum (defined by
formality of tone, complexity of content, and degree of
impersonality of stance), with informal, casual,
conversational language at the other extreme. (Snow,
2010:450)
 Academic language is the specialized language, both oral
and written, of academic settings that facilitates
communication and thinking about disciplinary content.
(Nagy and Townsend, 2012:91)
Academic vocabulary
 Latin and Greek vocabulary
 eat/dine, right/correct
 abstract, analyze, aspect
 Morphologically complex words
 Predisposition
 Nouns, adjectives and prepositions
 4:1
Vs.
1:1
(Nagy and Townsend, 2012)
Academic vocabulary
 Grammatical metaphor, including nominalization
 Informational density
 ratio of content words to total words
 Abstractness
 respiration
Just because people who read more can read better doesn’t mean
that if you read more this will make you read better.
The correlation between amount of reading and reading ability
does not imply a causal relationship
(Nagy and Townsend, 2012)
The Academic Word List
Academic Word List
 The Academic Word List (Coxhead)
 4 discipline areas
 3.5 million word corpus
 570 word families
 West’s 1953 General Service List
General Academic Vocabulary
 75% = 2000 most frequent words
 10-15% = academic vocabulary
 10-15% = specialist vocabulary
Academic Word List
Job
Examine
Quantitative
Qualitative
Omission
Persuasion
Classification
Determine
Criticisms
 Multi-meaning words
 Volume
Attribute
 Is one core list possible?
 Moving beyond individual words
 General Service List + AWL
 Address, control, means
 Address-issue, control-group, by-means
Too general?
 www.lextutor.ca
 2000 + 570 = 85%
 10% AWL
 75% 2000
The Academic Word List
 Used in numerous books
 Key to developing the area:
Coxhead and Hirsh (2007) Science word list
Wang, Liang and Ge (2008) Medical academic word list
Ward (2009) Engineering word list
 Brought lexis and further research to the fore
Academic Keyword List
Collection and purpose
 Magali Paquot (2010)
 Does not exclude high frequency words
 930 word list
 Includes published academic texts and two student
corpora
Collection and purpose
 50% from first 1000 words
 97% from first 2000 + AWL
 37.5% from AWL
 AWL + 2000 = 85% text
 Aimed more at writing than reading
Criticisms
 Transferability Vs. Specificity still in question
 Arguably both needed at different stages
 High frequency necessary
 Single item focus
Beyond individual words
Collocations
 Hyland 2008
 Electronic Engineering
 Biology
 Business Studies
 Applied linguistics
 4 word bundles
 50 most frequent
 On the other hand, as well as the, in the case of, at the
same time, the results of the
 Half on one list only
Collocations
 Function of collocations
 Research-orientated = location, procedure,
quantification, description, topic
At the same time, the purpose of, a wide range of, the size
of the, the currency board system
 Text-orientated = transition, results, structure, framing
In addition to the, it was found that, in the next section,
with the exception of
Collocations
 Participant-orientated = stance, engagement
It is possible that, as can be seen
Discipline
Researchorientated
Textorientated
Participantorientated
Biology
48.1%
43.5%
8.4%
Electrical
engineering
49.4%
40.4%
9.2%
Applied
linguistics
31.2%
49.5%
18.6%
Business studies
36%
48.4%
16.6%
Collocation
 Hyland and Tse (2007)
 marketing strategy
 learning strategy
 coping strategy
 Durrant (2009)
 Life Sciences, Science and Engineering, SocialPsychological, Social-administrative, Arts and
Humanities
 1000 two-word collocations across all 5 areas
Collocation
 Three quarters grammatical
 Reporting pattern ‘verb + that’
 Argue, assume, conclude, confirm, demonstrate,
emphasize, hypothesize, imply, indicate, note, predict,
reveal, show, speculate, suggest, suppose
 Frequency and pattern combined
 Transferability of use not investigated
 Based on, associate with, note that, defined as,
relationship between, effects on, indicate that
Students Vs. Published Materials
Learner English Vs. native speaker
academic English
 50% of AKL underused
 Basis, extent, assume, appropriate
 21.4% overused
 Aim, fact, main, also, often
 Amplify high frequency and diminish low ones
 idea/problem
Vs.
hypothesis/conversely
 Many high frequency words under used
 Argument, significant, particularly
 Between, in, by of = avoidance of noun modification
(Paquot, 2010)
Learner English Vs. native speaker
academic English
 Lack of register awareness
 Clusters or sequences
 For example, more and more, the problem is that
 In particular, in terms of, a considerable degree
 Semantic misuse
 On the contrary
 Chains of connective devices
(Paquot, 2010)
Vocabulary and Reading
Skills and strategies
 Do they exist? Are they needed?
 skimming, scanning, predicting
 Used by weak learners to cope
 Used by good learners to enrich meaning
 Critical thinking perhaps only possible if text
processing is automatized
Impact of accessibility
 Poor word recognition > poor comprehension >
practice is avoided
Cunningham and Stanovich (1998)
 Skills develop and word recognition improve
 Vocabulary
 Background knowledge
 Complex structures
(Chall, 1983)
Vocabulary growth
 Bulk of growth
 Indirect exposure Vs. direct teaching
 Reading Vs. Oral language
Reading and Vocabulary
Printed texts
Rank of median word
Abstracts of scientific articles
4389
Newspapers
1690
Popular magazines
1399
Adult books
1058
Comic books
867
Children’s books
627
Pre-school books
578
Reading and vocabulary
(Stanovich and Cunningham, 1998)
Reading and vocabulary
 Speech lexically impoverished
 Children’s books considerably rarer than most spoken
forms
 Adult books twice as prolific as speech
 Rare words (outside 10,000)


128/1000 scientific abstracts
20-30/1000 in all forms of speech
How many words do learners
need?
 3000 words (Laufer, 1992)
 10,000 words (Hazenberg and Hulstijn, 1996)
 1000 – 2000 (Laufer, 2000)
 AWL + 2000 – is it enough?
 98% text coverage (Nation)
Conclusion
 Select list carefully to match aims
 Pitch the level carefully
 Balance skills and language carefully
www.macmillanskillful.com/
Bibliography
 Anthony, L. (2011). Products, processes and practitioners: A




critical look at the importance of specificity in ESP. Taiwan
International ESP Journal. Vol 3:2 1-8
Bennett, K. (2009). English academic style manuals: A
survey. English for specific purposes. 8 p43-54.
Biber, D, Conrad, S and Leech, G. (2002). Student
Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman:
Harlow.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL
Quarterly, 34: 213-238.
Coxhead, A. (2011). The Academic Word List 10 Years On:
Research and Teaching Implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45:
355-361
Bibliography
 Dovey, T. (2006). What purposes specifically? Re-
thinking purposes and specificity in the context of the
‘new vocationalism’, English for Specific Purposes,
25(4), 387-402.
 Durrant, P. (2009). Investigating the viability of a
collocation list for students of English for academic
purposes. English for specific purposes. 28 p157-169.
 Eldridge, J. (2008). “No, There Isn’t an ‘Academic
Vocabulary’ but…” TESOL Quarterly, 42: 109 – 113
 Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2007). Is there an “Academic
Vocabulary”?. TESOL Quarterly, 41: 235 – 253.
Bibliography
 Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical bundles and
disciplinary variation. English for specific purposes. 27 p421.
 James, M.A. (2009). “Far” transfer of learning outcomes
from an ESL writing course: Can the gap be bridged?
English for Specific Purposes. 18 69-84
 Jordan, R, R. (1998). English for Academic Purposes: A
guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 Nagy, W, and Townsend, D. (2012). Words as Tools:
Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition.
Reading Research Quarterly. 47(1). pp91-108.
Bibliography
 Paquot, M. (2010). Academic Vocabulary in Learner
Writing: from extraction to analysis. London:
Continuum.
 Ramoroka, B, T. (2012). Teaching Academic Writing for
the Disciplines: How far can we be specific in an EAP
writing course? English Linguistics Research. 1:2
available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/elr.vln2p33
 Snow, C.E. (2010). Academic language and the
challenge of reading for learning about science.
Science. 450-452.