Academic vocabulary is regarded as an important vocabulary set for students at the tertiary to master's levels. Besides academic vocabulary, field-specific vocabulary is another important set that students in different fields of study should be required to explore. The physical education and sports science English word list was created to assist…

This study explored words in materials science research articles using New Academic Word List (NAWL) and New General Service List (NGSL) created by Browne at al. (2013) as reference lists. The objectives of this research were to explore the frequency and coverage of the NAWL and the NGSL in materials science research articles and identify…

General academic words are those which are typically learned through exposure to school texts and occur across disciplines. We examined academic vocabulary assessment data from a group of English-speaking middle school students (N = 1,747). We tested how word frequency, complexity, proximity, polysemy, and diversity related to students' knowledge…

General academic words are those which are typically learned through exposure to school texts and occur across disciplines. We examined academic vocabulary assessment data from a group of English-speaking middle school students (N = 1,747). We tested how word frequency, complexity, proximity, polysemy, and diversity related to students' knowledge…

In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can…

When learning high- and mid-frequency words, approximately 5,000 words might be inadequate for learners to survive in a career as a tourist guide. This paper aims to construct technical word lists for Thai tourist guides to serve as supplementary learning materials. Different word lists need different criteria for their construction. Three main…

Research into vocabulary knowledge often differentiates between breadth (how many words a person knows) and depth (how well the words are known). Both theoretical categories are essential for understanding language learners' lexical development, but how the different aspects of vocabulary knowledge interconnect has not received the same attention…

To date, attempts at empirically validating a construct of academic vocabulary in the form of a frequency list in languages other than English remain conspicuously absent in peer-reviewed journals. This study aims to close this gap by using Russian as a case study to develop an academic vocabulary list and prove its viability through a variety of…

The availability of corpora has greatly strengthened the possibilities of identifying high-frequency lexical items in a more systematic and objective manner than has typically been used for vocabulary instruction. This article adopts a corpus-based approach to accommodate the vocabulary instructional needs of students enrolled in university…

This study outlines the steps taken to create an academic multi-word unit list derived from corpus data. It gives details on the procedure used and the rationale behind why certain approaches were utilised. It also compares existing resources and makes some suggestions for practical use of the resulting resource.

This paper aims to advance our understanding of how children's use of vocabulary in writing changes as they progress through their school careers. It examines the extent to which a model of lexical sophistication as use of low-frequency, register-appropriate words adequately captures development in vocabulary use across the course of compulsory…

When students of English deliver oral presentations at university on academic topics, there is often a dilemma as to whether to incorporate academic vocabulary into their monologues or not. Academic vocabulary can help students to present their ideas concisely and be a 'badge of identity' to the academic community. However, acquiring a productive…

To have more information about the English words known by second language (L2) speakers, we ran a large-scale crowdsourcing vocabulary test, which yielded 17 million useful responses. It provided us with a list of 445 words known to nearly all participants. The list was compared to various existing lists of words advised to include in the first…

Investigating lexical richness is a continuing concern within vocabulary studies. The present study aims to contribute to this growing area of research by exploring EFL learners' free active vocabulary by dividing them into groups based on their receptive vocabulary. It seeks to explain the role of different essay types and proficiency levels…

Vocabulary has been accepted as an important aspect of language learning in many studies. In the light of these studies in literature, the purpose of the present study is to evaluate the general and academic lexical competence and performance of preparatory class students at School of Foreign Languages, Kütahya Dumlupinar University. Within this…