How many academic vocabularies do students need?

Description

Because vocabulary is key in comprehending and learning a second language, an important focus of research and teaching practice in English for Academic Purposes has been cataloguing the vocabulary needed by second-language users of English in academic settings. These efforts have been based on corpus investigations of published academic writing, i.e., the sorts of texts which students need to be able to read and understand. However, it is well established that published academic genres are quite different in many respects from those of assessment genres (Biber, 2006). It is therefore possible that existing academic vocabulary lists may be useful for the development of students' receptive skills, but less so with respect to productive skills. This paper presents the results of a corpus investigation into university students' productive vocabulary. Adapting the method developed by Gardner and Davies (2014) and two corpora of student writing, the investigation aimed to establish whether and to what extent receptive and productive academic vocabulary differ. Pedagogical implications of the results will be presented. Biber, D. (2006). University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gardner, D., & Davies, M. (2014). A new Academic Vocabulary List. Applied Linguistics, 35, 305–327.

Period	22 Apr 2016
Held at	ASLA