Do We Need Discipline-Specific Academic Word Lists? Linguistics Academic Word List (LAWL)

This corpus-based study aimed at exploring the most frequently-used academic words in linguistics and compare the wordlist with the distribution of high frequency words in Coxhead’s Academic Word List (AWL) and West’s General Service List (GSL) to examine their coverage within the linguistics corpus. To this end, a corpus of ۷۰۰ linguistics research articles (LRAC), consisting of approximately ۴ million words from four main linguistics sub-disciplines (phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax) was compiled and analyzed based on two criteria; frequency and range. Based on the analysis, a list consisting of ۱۲۶۳ academic word families was produced to provide a useful linguistics academic word list for native and non- native English speakers. Results showed that AWL words account for ۱۰.۱۸ % of the entire LRAC, and GSL words account for ۷۲.۴۸% of the entire LRAC. The findings suggested that of ۵۷۰ word families in Coxhead’s AWL, ۳۸۱ (۶۶.۸۴%) word families correspond with the word selections criteria which provide ۲۹.۸۸% of the word families in Linguistics Academic Word List (LAWL). Furthermore, ۲۲۴ word families that were frequently used in linguistic research article corpus (LRAC) were not listed in GSL and AWL. They accounted for ۱۸.۵۱% of the word families in LAWL with coverage of ۵.۰۷% over LRAC, and compared with the ۲۰۰۰ GSL, ۶۵۸ word families were identified. The results have pedagogical implications for linguistics practitioners and EAP practitioners, researchers, and material designers.

کلیدواژه ها:

academic word list ، general service list ، research articles ، English for academic purposes ، corpus linguistics ، academic writing