Abstract
An indicator of learners' language proficiency is the breadth of their vocabulary. Given the volume of vocabulary in English, it may be intimidating for those required to publish academic research articles. Despite possessing a wealth of knowledge in their disciplines, without guidance these people may suffer from limited opportunities to have their voices heard. To reduce this problem for those in educational sciences, in this study I aimed to generate a preliminary list of words frequently used in twelve sub-disciplines. A corpus of 1,233,465 running words derived from 266 research articles was investigated. Results revealed that 76.61% of the corpus was based on the first 2,000 General Service List (GSL), and 12.85% were based on the Academic Words List (AWL) and the University Words List (UWL). 10.53% were comprised of off-list words including discipline-specific vocabulary. Data analysis resulted in a 590-word list including words outside of the 2,000 GSL words. Eighty9 four percent of these words were present in ? 9 of the sub-disciplines. It was also found that the most frequently occurring words were research terms. There were a significant number of academic words together with words that are more directly related to education. The results are discussed and recommendations are made to enhance learners lexical competence.
| Original language | British English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 8-38 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Asian ESP Journal |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| State | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Academic lexis
- Academic writing
- Education research articles
- Lexical competence
- Vocabulary list
