Presentation on Receptive and productive academic language in use: Academic vocabulary as a case study

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 the development of lists of academic vocabulary. Such lists are 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, given the well established differences among the various academic disciplines, it seems likely that existing academic vocabulary lists may give a better representation of the receptive vocabulary students need, but that they may provide poorer coverage of the productive academic vocabulary needed for assessment purposes. This paper presents the results of a corpus investigation into university students' productive vocabulary. Using 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.

Period	May 2016
Held at	LUNAS, Copenhagen