Averil Coxhead

A New Academic Word List

This article describes the development and evaluation of a new academic word list (Coxhead, 1998), which was compiled from a corpus of 3.5 million running words of written academic text by examining the range and frequency of words outside the first 2,000 most frequently occurring words of English, as described by West (1953). The AWL contains 570 word families that account for approximately 10.0% of the total words (tokens) in academic texts but only 1.4% of the total words in a fiction collection of the same size. This difference in coverage provides evidence that the list contains predominantly academic words. By highlighting the words that university students meet in a wide range of academic texts, the AWL shows learners with academic goals which words are most worth studying. The list also provides a useful basis for further research into the nature of academic vocabulary.

Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes: The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes

It is useful for teaching and learning to divide the vocabulary of English into four groups. The high frequency words. These consist of around 2,000 word families. They are wide range high frequency words that are an essential basis for all language use. They include most of the 176 function words of English. Typically they provide coverage of around 80% of the running words in academic text. The classic collection of these is Michael Wests (1953) General Service List of English Words (GSL). The academic vocabulary. This consists of 570 words (Coxhead, 1998) that are reasonably frequent in a wide range of academic texts, but are not so common, although they do occur, in other kinds of texts. Because they provide coverage of around 8.5%–10% of the running words in an academic text, they are very important for learners with academic purposes. They make the difference between 80% coverage (one unknown word in every five running words) and 90% coverage (one unknown word in every ten running words). Technical vocabulary. This differs from subject area to subject area. For any particular subject it consists of probably 1,000 words or less. It could provide coverage of up to 5% of the running words in a text. The low frequency words. These consist of words that are typically vey narrow range and low frequency. Because of the topic of a particular text a small number may occasionally be quite frequent within that text. In general, they consist of words that occur once or twice and then will not be met again for along time. Of the 86,741 different word types in the 5,000,000 running word corpus used in the Carroll, Davies and Richman (1971) count, 40.4% occured only once in that corpus.

Gauging the effects of exercises on verb–noun collocations:

Many contemporary textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) and books for vocabulary study contain exercises with a focus on collocations, with verb–noun collocations (e.g. make a mistake) being particularly popular as targets for collocation learning. Common exercise formats used in textbooks and other pedagogic materials require learners to establish appropriate matches between sets of verbs and nouns. However, matching exercises almost inevitably carry a risk of erroneous connections, and despite corrective feedback these might leave undesirable traces in the learner’s memory. We report four small-scale trials (total n = 135) in which the learning gains obtained from verb–noun matching exercises are compared with the learning gains obtained from a format in which the target collocations are presented to the learners as intact wholes. Pre-test to post-test gains turned out small in all of the conditions, owing in part to the learners’ substitution of initially correct choices by distracters from the exercises. The latter, negative side-effect was attested more often in the matching exercises than in the exercises where the learners worked with collocations as intact wholes.

Vocabulary Size Research at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

The English Language Institute (now the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) at Victoria University of Wellington has a long history of corpus-based vocabulary research, especially after the arrival of the second director of the institute, H. V. George, and the appointment of Helen Barnard, whom George knew in India. Georges successor, Graeme Kennedy, also saw corpus linguistics as a very fruitful and important area of applied language research.

Replication research in pedagogical approaches to formulaic sequences: Jones & Haywood (2004) and Alali & Schmitt (2012)

Research into the formulaic nature of language has grown in size and scale in the last 20 years or more, much of it based in corpus studies and involving the identification and categorisation of formulas. Research suggests that there are benefits for second and foreign language learners recognising formulaic sequences when listening and reading, and using them in speaking and writing. Very few studies, however, actually focus on formulaic sequences and teaching methodology and materials design in second and foreign language learning. This paper presents a brief background to researching, teaching and learning formulaic sequences, and considers the case for replication research in this area. The third part focuses on two original studies (Jones & Hayward 2004 ; Alali & Schmitt 2012 ) and makes suggestions for possible replication studies.

Using Talanoa to develop bilingual word lists of technical vocabulary in the trades

ABSTRACT It is important for anyone entering a profession to learn their profession’s specialised language. This is also true of those learning trades such as automotive technology or plumbing. Knowledge of specialised language allows trades professionals to speak to other professionals and read technical material. Although this technical language is new to all students, learning it is harder for students learning in a second language. In this article we provide support for this learning for students from the Pacific Island nation of Tonga, who are studying a trade in English either in Tonga or abroad. In prior work we developed technical word lists in four trades, identifying the technical vocabulary in a 1.6 million-word corpus of course material. In this article, we extend that research by developing bilingual English-Tongan word lists, using culturally appropriate Talanoa methodology to draw on the specialist knowledge of Tongan-speaking trades’ professionals. Translation revealed that numerous technical words do not have a direct translation in Tongan, particularly infrequent English words. It also revealed words with a clear Tongan equivalent, and Tonganised English words. The bilingual word lists will benefit Tongan trades’ trainees in Tonga and those who are migrants to English countries.

Using a Corpus-Based Approach to Select Medical Vocabulary for an ESP Course: The Case for High-Frequency Vocabulary

This chapter focuses on the use of multiple corpora and word lists made from corpora to select ESP vocabulary and on the integration of that lexis into an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. The first part of the chapter discusses the compilation of a corpus of medical textbooks in English which are commonly used in many Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, in undergraduate medical courses. A second corpus, this time of general English, was used as a comparison to the medical textbook corpus. Both corpora were analyzed for vocabulary load using Nation’s (2012) BNC/COCA lists, Coxhead’s AWL (2000) and Coxhead and Hirsh’s (2007) Science List. The study found that the first 3000 words constitute a vital set of vocabulary for ESP medical students at the beginning of their studies and that the vocabulary load of the medical textbooks is far greater than the loads of university texts (see Nation 2006). Bringing these corpus-based findings into ESP courses is an important task. The second part of the chapter discussed integrating these findings into an ESP course for medical students, using Nation’s (2013) framework of planning, strategy training, testing, and teaching vocabulary.

The development and application of a specialised word list: the case of Fabrication

Abstract Learners in the trades are faced with learning a large amount of technical vocabulary along with the content of their field, but they do not tend to encounter this language outside their courses of study. This technical vocabulary is a core element in their developing knowledge of their trade and their learner identity. This article focuses first on identifying technical vocabulary in Fabrication using specialised written and spoken corpora, and through extensive checking with experts in the field as well as reference sources. A technical word list of 1079 types was developed, along with a list of common abbreviations and their meanings and a list of proper nouns. The technical word list covers over 30% of the vocabulary in the written Fabrication corpus and just over 9% of the spoken Fabrication corpus. The second part of the article discusses this vocabulary in light of the concept of vocational thresholds and provides suggestions for incorporating the word list into pedagogy, including an apprenticeship approach in which a focus on literacy/literacy acquisition is embedded into content teaching. Suggestions for future research are also included.

Vocabulary research and pedagogy: Introduction to the special issue

The impetus for this special issue came from the Vocab@Vic conference, which was hosted in December, 2013 at Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, Aotearoa / New Zealand. The aim of the conference, and of this special issue, was to focus on current trends in vocabulary research in second or foreign language teaching and learning. An unstated secondary aim of the conference was to honour Emeritus Professor Paul Nation for his continued contribution to research and learning and teaching vocabulary in another language. Paul is the author of one of the best known volumes on vocabulary, Learning vocabulary in another language (now in its second edition, 2013), and each contribution in this special issue is related to topics which Paul has written about and researched. He also reviewed a number of articles for this special issue. From experience, I know it can be difficult to thank Paul to his face, so I am dedicating this special issue to him. At the suggestion of Frank Boers, another vocabulary researcher and enthusiast, the organization of this special issue follows that of an earlier collective volume on vocabulary edited by Bogaards & Laufer (2004). The themes of that volume were selection (or prioritization), acquisition (and instruction), and testing (or assessment). Laufer (2014) comments on four studies from a special interest group on vocabulary in the Japanese Association of Language Teachers (JALT) using this same framework, which suggests that these areas of interest remain current in vocabulary studies. Batia Laufer is another stalwart of the vocabulary research community, and drawing on her work is also a way to recognize her considerable impact on the field. It is fitting to lead off the special issue with an article co-authored by Norbert Schmitt, a dedicated and prolific scholar in vocabulary studies, whose review article published in Language Teaching Research (Schmitt, 2008) is one of the most cited pieces in the 20-year history of the journal. Melodie Garnier and Norbert Schmitt’s contribution exemplifies the theme of selection. Selecting items for teaching is a major area of concern because of the cost–benefit equation, and learners and teachers need to get the best return for effort. The focus of Garnier and Schmitt’s contribution is phrasal verbs (a term they use to also encompass prepositional verbs). As there are several 604788 LTR0010.1177/1362168815604788Language Teaching ResearchCoxhead research-article2015