Recently researchers have proposed using information from teachers and learners to supplement the information from corpora in the selection of the most useful words for foreign language learners. Yet the extent to which these data sets correlate to one another is unclear. This study explicitly investigated the relationships between (a) the lexical…

Growing a large vocabulary is one of the most important tasks of language learners and yet research reports on low levels of lexical knowledge for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. In EFL contexts, textbooks are a vital source of exposure to English and the words that are worth learning. The New Concept English textbook series is…

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…

The linguistic features of academic spoken English are different from those of academic written English. Therefore, for this study, an Academic Spoken Word List (ASWL) was developed and validated to help second language (L2) learners enhance their comprehension of academic speech in English-medium universities. The ASWL contains 1,741 word…

This article focuses on vocabulary in the context of English-medium instruction at an international high school in Germany. Longitudinal testing was carried out using the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) (Nation, 1983; Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001), with 468 participants tested on entry to their first year of secondary school (Grade 6, aged…

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. George's…

The Academic Word List (AWL) is now widely used in English for academic purposes (EAP) classrooms in many countries, in a wide range of materials, in vocabulary tests, and as a major resource for researchers. In this article the author reflects on the impact of the AWL by looking at commonly asked questions about the list: What is the AWL? Is the…

Describes the development and evaluation of a new academic word list that was completed 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 in English. Explains the problems with existing word lists intended to guide materials…