1. Academic Vocabulary
Louis Rogers

3. Overview Defining academic vocabulary The Academic Word List
The Academic Keyword List
Beyond individual words
Vocabulary and reading

4. 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)

5. 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)

6. 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)

7. The Academic Word List

8. 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

9. General Academic Vocabulary
75% = 2000 most frequent words
10-15% = academic vocabulary
10-15% = specialist vocabulary

10. Academic Word List Job Examine Quantitative Qualitative
Omission Persuasion
Classification Determine
Awl – job qualitative

11. 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
Volume – science meaning
Issue – ‘flow out’ e.g. issue shares – only in business
Attribute – ‘feature’ in business verb ‘to accredit’ in science

12. Too general?
= 85%
10% AWL
75% 2000

14. 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

15. Academic Keyword List

16. Collection and purpose
Magali Paquot (2010)
Does not exclude high frequency words
930 word list
Includes published academic texts and two student corpora

17. Collection and purpose
50% from first 1000 words
97% from first AWL
37.5% from AWL
AWL = 85% text
Aimed more at writing than reading

18. Criticisms Transferability Vs. Specificity still in question
Arguably both needed at different stages
High frequency necessary
Single item focus

19. Beyond individual words

20. Collocations Hyland 2008 4 word bundles 50 most frequent
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

21. 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
Framing = limiting conditions

22. Collocations Participant-orientated = stance, engagement
It is possible that, as can be seen
Discipline
Research-orientated
Text-orientated
Participant-orientated
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%
Engagement = address the reader directly

23. Collocation Hyland and Tse (2007) Durrant (2009) marketing strategy
learning strategy
coping strategy
Durrant (2009)
Life Sciences, Science and Engineering, Social-Psychological, Social-administrative, Arts and Humanities
1000 two-word collocations across all 5 areas
Social-Psychological – education, nursing, psychology
Social-administrative – business, economics, politics, law
25 million word corpora

24. 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

25. Students Vs. Published Materials

26. 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)

27. 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)

28. Vocabulary and Reading

29. 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

30. 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)
Draining word recognition takes over efforts that should be placed on comprehension
Practice is avoided or tolerated without real cognitive involvement
Other factors such as vocabulary, background knowledge or familiarity with complex structures become the limiting factor

31. Vocabulary growth Bulk of growth Indirect exposure Vs. direct teaching
Reading Vs. Oral language
Point 1 – Sternberg, Gildea,
Pont 2 – Hayes, Stanovich

32. 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
Not surprising students gravitate to certain sources such as newspapers

33. Reading and vocabulary
(Stanovich and Cunningham, 1998)

34. 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
If most vocabulary learning occurs outside the classroom then this will happen vastly more in reading than in listening

35. How many words do learners need?
3000 words (Laufer, 1992)
10,000 words (Hazenberg and Hulstijn, 1996)
1000 – 2000 (Laufer, 2000)
AWL – is it enough?
98% text coverage (Nation)
3000 words to even comprehend authentic texts
Most know only some knew 4000

36. Conclusion Select list carefully to match aims
Pitch the level carefully
Balance skills and language carefully

38. 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:
Coxhead, A. (2011). The Academic Word List 10 Years On: Research and Teaching Implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45:

39. 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),
Durrant, P. (2009). Investigating the viability of a collocation list for students of English for academic purposes. English for specific purposes. 28 p
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.

40. Bibliography
Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation. English for specific purposes. 27 p4-21.
James, M.A. (2009). “Far” transfer of learning outcomes from an ESL writing course: Can the gap be bridged? English for Specific Purposes
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). pp

41. 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:
Snow, C.E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science