scholarly journals Academic Words in the English Research Article Abstracts: the Coverage and Frequency

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Fransiskus Jemadi ◽  
Fatmawati . ◽  
Priska Filomena Iku
Keyword(s):  
Word List ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Lexical Items

<p>The present study aimed at exploring the abstracts of research articles written by non-native English researchers to uncover the specific characteristics of academic vocabulary employed in the English research articles abstracts.It focuses on frequency and coverage distribution of the words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) in the abstracts of research articles. The source of data for this corpus study was gathered from 97 abstracts written by the EFL researchers and published by the <em>Journal Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Missio</em> at STKIP St. Paulus Ruteng from 2015 until 2018. The results of this study revealed that the coverage of K1, the first most frequent 1000 English words, is the most dominant lexical items applied by the researchers. It covered 71.33% of the texts. The representation of lexical items that belong to K2, the second most frequent 1000 English words, covered 5.44% of all the words used by the writers in their abstracts. Moreover, the presence of Academic Word List, which refers to a list of 570 word families that are commonly found in academic texts and Off-list, which refers to the words that do not belong to K1 or K2 because it is related to certain field, has slight difference over all of the texts where the former covers 11.95% and the later covers 11.26%. As far as the findings of the present study are concerned, the room for some improvements on academic words applied in the abstracts need to pay attention.</p>

The language of quoting in academic writing

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieke Verheijen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Lexical Items

Because quotation is a fundamental aspect of academic texts, this corpus study examines the language of quoting in (L2) academic writing. To find out whether there are subtle linguistic differences in the use of quotation by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) and professional academics who are native speakers of English (NSE), I compare two corpora of scholarly writings: one by upper intermediate and advanced EFL students and one by NSE experts. 1201 Quotes were extracted from the writings and examined for a broad range of lexico-grammatical features relevant to using quotes, including introductions to quotes, lexical items in introducing quotes, ‘special’ quotes, and punctuation surrounding quotes. The findings make clear that EFL students and NSE experts differ significantly on various points in their language of quoting. Making students aware of these differences could make their academic writing more professional, native-like, and sophisticated.

scholarly journals Teaching Second Language Vocabulary: the Role and Application of the AWL

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Ge Yan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Word List ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Writing Assignments

This paper focuses on the role and application of AWL in science-related subjects, namely the issue of whether or not students in science-related majors is advantaged or disadvantaged in using the Academic Word List (AWL) in their academic writing assignments as the imbalance of word frequency in AWL. Participants (n=18) are obliged to answer the Questionnaire. Furthermore, if needed, a brief interview would be arranged on some uncertain questions. Results show that learning and acquiring academic vocabulary would benefit participants in research articles, while AWL is inadequate for students in science-related disciplines in their academic writing. We claim that students in science-related majors may be disadvantaged than other majors’ students in using Coxhead’s Academic Word List, and a wordlist screened out from science-related corpus perhaps more suitable for ESP students. Meanwhile, AWL, as a role of reference, would aid language learning or acquisition.

scholarly journals Referential Coherence of Academic Texts: A Corpus-Based Analysis of L2 Research Papers in Management

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-127
Author(s):  
Elizaveta A. Smirnova
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Professional Writers

This paper focuses on referential coherence, which is seen as a crucial attribute of effective academic writing. Findings are reported from a corpus study of Russian students’ research proposals. The learners’ use of anaphoric expressions is compared with a reference corpus, which comprises research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It was hypothesised that learners use anaphora less frequently than professional writers and face some difficulties when using anaphoric expressions. The results of the analysis partly confirmed the hypothesis and allowed the identification of particular problems connected with the students’ use of anaphoric expressions, which were then classified into several groups. Examples of exercises aimed at dealing with the identified problems are also provided. It is hoped that the reported findings, as well as the author’s suggested reasons for the problems and possible ways of dealing with them, will be useful for EAP practitioners, researchers, and students writing their research papers in English.

scholarly journals Academic Vocabulary Use in Doctoral Theses: A Corpus-Based Lexical Analysis of Academic Word List (AWL) in Major Scientific Disciplinary Groups

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 282
Author(s):  
Habibullah Pathan ◽  
Rafique A. Memon ◽  
Shumaila Memon ◽  
Syed Waqar Ali Shah ◽  
Aziz Magsi
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Word List ◽  
Health Sciences ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Academic Genres ◽  
Academic Implications

Since the development of academic word list (AWL) by Coxhead (2000), multiple studies have attempted to investigate its effectiveness and relevance of the included academic vocabulary in the texts or corpora of various academic fields, disciplines, subjects and also in multiple academic genres and registers. Similarly, this study also aims at investigating the text coverage of Coxhead’s (2000) AWL in Pakistani doctoral theses of two major scientific disciplinary groups (Biological & health sciences as well as Physical sciences); furthermore the study also analyses the frequency of the AWL word families to extract the most frequent word families in the theses texts. In order to achieve this goal, a pre-built corpus of Pakistani doctoral theses (PAKDTh) (Aziz, 2016) comprises of 200 doctoral theses from two major scientific disciplinary groups was used as textual data. Using concordance software AntConc version 3.4.4 (Anthony, 2016), computer-driven data analysis revealed that in total 8.76% (496839 words) of the text in Pakistani doctoral thesis corpus is covered by the AWL words. Further distributing the analysis per sub-lists, shows that the first three sub-lists of AWL accounted for almost 57% of the whole text coverage. An attempt was made to further analyze the AWL text coverage by considering the frequency of occurrences in terms of word families. The findings showed that among 570- word families of Coxhead’s (2000) AWL, 550-word families with the sum of 96.49% are found to occur more than 10 times in PAKDTh corpus, which are taken as word families used in the corpus. This study concludes that Coxhead’s (2000) AWL is proved effective for the writing of theses. On the basis of the findings, further possible academic implications are discussed in detail.

scholarly journals The Word List Distribution in Social Science Research Articles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Sorawut Chanasattru ◽  
Supong Tangkiengsirisin
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Word List ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
General Category ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Flash Cards ◽  
Word Lists

This study investigates the distribution and coverage of words in New General Service List (NGSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) in social science research articles. Sixty-four open-access English social science research articles published in 2013-2015 in the ScienceDirect General category were selected and compiled to the Social Science Corpus (SSC). The AntWordProfiler 1.4.0 was utilized to calculate the frequency and coverage percentage of words from the two word lists. Word families in level 1 and level 2 of the NGSL were utilized over 70 percent, whilst level 3 word families were used around 60 percent of the entire SSC. Similarly, 99.65 percent of the AWL word families were discovered. Regarding coverage, the NGSL word families accounted for over 70 percent and the AWL word families covered around 14 percent revealing significant coverage of both word lists. The top 10 NGSL word families represented journals subject areas from which they were derived, whilst the top 10 AWL word families were used more repeatedly and linked with social science research areas. The finding of high distributions and coverage corroborated that the NGSL and the AWL significantly contribute to vocabulary pedagogy in preparing students for reading and writing social science research articles. Additionally, some pedagogical implication guidelines of the NGSL and the AWL such as flash cards, quizzes, and written tests were also introduced.

scholarly journals Word meaning in academic English: homography in the Academic Word List

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. W. Ming-Tzu ◽  
Paul Nation
Keyword(s):  
Word Meaning ◽  
Word List ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Frequency Range ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Almost All

The Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000) consists of 570 word families that are frequent and wide ranging in academic texts. It was created by counting the frequency, range, and evenness of spread of word forms in a specially constructed academic corpus. This study examines the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) to see if the existence of unrelated meanings for the same word form (homographs) has resulted in the inclusion of words in the list which would not be there if their clearly different meanings were distinguished. The study shows that only a small proportion of the word families contain homographs, and in almost all cases, one of the members of a pair or group of homographs is much more frequent and widely used than the others. Only three word families (intelligence, offset, and panel) drop out of the list because none of their homographs separately meet the criteria for inclusion in the list. A list of homographs in the AWL is provided, with frequencies for those where each of the members of a homograph pair are reasonably frequent.

scholarly journals A Survey Study on Academic Vocabulary Learning Strategies by EFL University Students

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1009
Author(s):  
Le Pham Hoai Huong
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Word List ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Vocabulary Learning Strategies

The development of the Academic Word List by Coxhead (2000) has drawn attention of the academia to teaching and learning academic vocabulary as well as the creation of more word lists for different majors. However, most of the research in the field of vocabulary has focused on the learning strategies for general vocabulary only (e.g. Gu & Johnson, 1996; Lawson, & Hogben, 1996; Nation, 2001; Schmitt & McCarthy, 1997). Little has been done to investigate strategies for academic vocabulary (Nushi & Jenabzadeh 2016). Given the importance of academic vocabulary in comprising some 8%-10% of running words in academic texts (Nation, 2001), the present study was set out to investigate EFL university students’ strategies for learning academic English words. The participants included 132 EFL university students. The study adopted the taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies by Schmitt (2000) and strategies for learning academic words by Bramki and Williams (1984) and Chung and Nation (2003). The findings reveal that the respondents tended to use on-line dictionaries and other applications more than cognitive strategies in learning academic words. Based on the findings of the study, suggestions were put forward to a systematized list of academic vocabulary learning strategies as well as what teachers and learners should do when encountering new academic words.

scholarly journals Word meaning in academic English: homography in the Academic Word List

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Nation ◽  
K Wang
Keyword(s):  
Word Meaning ◽  
Word List ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Frequency Range ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Almost All

The Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000) consists of 570 word families that are frequent and wide ranging in academic texts. It was created by counting the frequency, range, and evenness of spread of word forms in a specially constructed academic corpus. This study examines the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) to see if the existence of unrelated meanings for the same word form (homographs) has resulted in the inclusion of words in the list which would not be there if their clearly different meanings were distinguished. The study shows that only a small proportion of the word families contain homographs, and in almost all cases, one of the members of a pair or group of homographs is much more frequent and widely used than the others. Only three word families (intelligence, offset, and panel) drop out of the list because none of their homographs separately meet the criteria for inclusion in the list. A list of homographs in the AWL is provided, with frequencies for those where each of the members of a homograph pair are reasonably frequent.

scholarly journals How useful is eap vocabulary for esp? a corpus based case study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Sutarsyah ◽  
Paul Nation ◽  
G Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Word List ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Very High Frequency ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
The University ◽  
General Service ◽  
Very High

This study compares the vocabulary of a single Economics text of almost 300,000 running words with the vocabulary of a corpus of similar length made up of a variety of academic texts. It was found that the general academic corpus used a very much larger vocabulary than the more focused Economics text. A small number of words that were closely related to the topic of the text occurred with very high frequency in the Economics text. The general academic corpus had a very large number of low frequency words. Beyond the words in West's General Service List and the University Word List, there was little overlap between the vocabulary of the two corpora. This indicates that as far as vocabulary is concerned, EAP courses that go beyond the high frequency academic vocabulary are of little value for learners with specific purposes. © 1994, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

scholarly journals How useful is eap vocabulary for esp? a corpus based case study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Sutarsyah ◽  
Paul Nation ◽  
G Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Word List ◽  
Academic Vocabulary ◽  
Very High Frequency ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
The University ◽  
General Service ◽  
Very High

This study compares the vocabulary of a single Economics text of almost 300,000 running words with the vocabulary of a corpus of similar length made up of a variety of academic texts. It was found that the general academic corpus used a very much larger vocabulary than the more focused Economics text. A small number of words that were closely related to the topic of the text occurred with very high frequency in the Economics text. The general academic corpus had a very large number of low frequency words. Beyond the words in West's General Service List and the University Word List, there was little overlap between the vocabulary of the two corpora. This indicates that as far as vocabulary is concerned, EAP courses that go beyond the high frequency academic vocabulary are of little value for learners with specific purposes. © 1994, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document