Pertanika Journal of Social Science & Humanities, 2014

This paper reports the results of a mixed-method study which was conducted to investigate whether Malay ESL learners who were, at the time the study was conducted, first-year Diploma in Computer Science students in a public university in Malaysia could improve their receptive vocabulary knowledge incidentally while reading silently in the classroom. A quasi experiment and a focus group interview were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. The following were the two main research questions of the study: a) What is the effect of focused in-class reading with writing activity on the students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge at the 2,000 word-family level? b) What are the students’ perceptions of these activities in improving their vocabulary knowledge? The study concluded that a short period of focused in-class reading and writing activity conducted consistently can improve L2 learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge. Although both the experimental and control groups showed significant improvement in their receptive vocabulary knowledge at the 2000-word level, the vocabulary growth for the experimental group was higher than for the control group. In addition, the participants perceived focused in-class reading with writing activity as beneficial in improving their general vocabulary knowledge. Keywords: Focused in-class reading, receptive vocabulary, vocabulary growth, word famil

Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2018

The Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) is widely used in preparing non-native speakers for academic courses, and it is thought that these words are essential for the understanding of English academic texts (Cobb & Horst, 2004). It is also thought the AWL is an infrequent and specialised list inaccessible from general language. These preconceptions are challenged in this study which demonstrates with reference to BNC/COCA word lists that the majority of the AWL fall within the most frequent 3,000 words in English, a grouping which Schmitt and Schmitt (2014) describe as highly frequent. Using a specially created test of the AWL and the XK-Lex test of overall vocabulary size (Authors, 2012), the study demonstrates that the learning of the AWL appears strongly influenced by the frequency of these words in general corpora and that the AWL test resembles very strongly a test of overall vocabulary size. When scores from these tests are related to a Grade Point Average (GPA) measure, it appears that knowledge of the AWL adds only marginally to the explanatory power of overall vocabulary size in explaining variance in GPA scores. This conclusion matches that of Townsend et al. (2012) although the tests in this study appear to have a greater explanatory power.

Assessing and Developing Writing Skills (S. Göpferich & I. Neumann (Eds.)), 2016

English: This article examines business students' ability to technicalize in an L2 English writing task. Building up technicality in discourse is a key component of writing competence. Despite the importance of technicality for discipline-specific writing, so far little attention has been paid to identifying the usage patterns characteristic of this type of writing. The aim of this study is to investigate how undergraduate writers technicalize in elaborating on technical terms by means of defining, exemplifying and explaining. Drawing on a self-compiled specialized corpus, the study adopts a mixed-methods approach of computation and interpretation. It was found that technicalizing is a two-stage process, which consists of naming a term and subsequently embedding it in taxonomic relationships. The resulting chains of reference are taken to be indicative of field-specific uses in writing. The findings have important implications for developing business students' writing skills in view of the conceptual challenges they meet in current specific-purpose instruction. German: Gegenstand des vorliegenden Beitrags ist die Art und Weise, wie Studierende beim fachspezifischen Schreiben in ihrer L2 Englisch Technizität (technicality) herstellen. Hierzu werden diejenigen sprachlichen Verfahren ermittelt, die sie nutzen, um Fachtermini durch Definitionen, Beispiele und Erklärungen in den Text einzubetten. Die Fähigkeit, Technizität herzustellen, wird dabei als wesentliche Komponente der Kompetenz zum fachsprachlichen bzw. disziplinspezifischen Schreiben verstanden. Als Datengrundlage dient ein spezialisiertes Korpus von studentischen Texten aus vier Bereichen der internationalen Betriebswirtschaftslehre, die auf Englisch als L2 verfasst wurden. In einem Mixed-Methods-Ansatz werden korpuslinguistische mit interpretatorischen Verfahren kombiniert. Es zeigt sich, dass das Herstellen von Technizität als zweistufiger Prozess beschrieben werden kann, in dem ein Fachausdruck zunächst benannt und dann in eine taxonomische Beziehung eingebettet wird, wodurch Referenzketten entstehen, die für die untersuchten Texte charakteristisch sind. Aus den gewonnenen Erkenntnissen werden Schlussfolgerungen für die Didaktik der Schreibkompetenzförderung in wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Lehr-/Lernkontexten gezogen. Writing for specific purposes 21 Table 2: ABE corpus data Subcorpora Number of papers Type/token ratio (STTR) Number of running words (tokens) Business 103 41.22 236,917

ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2021

Extramural English (EE) exposure has been shown to correlate with general vocabulary knowledge. It remains uncertain, however, how academic vocabulary knowledge correlates with EE and can be explained by EE factors and demographic factors. Therefore, an academic vocabulary test, a background questionnaire, and a survey on current EE involvement were administered to 817 Swedish upper-secondary students in university-preparatory study programmes. A linear model revealed little explanation from demographic factors (age, gender, number of first languages, length of English instruction, and parental educational level) whereas EE factors (reading, listening & viewing without textual support, viewing with Swedish subtitles) accounted for 26% of the variation. Since extensive EE involvement may support the incidental learning of academic lexis, the paper suggests pre-tertiary instructional principles being guided by extramural as well as intramural incidental learning opportunities.

2016

This paper reports on a study conducted in 2011 with undergraduate students at the University of Namibia (UNAM). One of the aims of the study was to assess the vocabulary and academic literacy levels of the students, as well as to examine the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and academic literacy. The multi componential aspect of vocabulary knowledge coupled with the fact that university students need a large vocabulary (relevant to their academic context and purposes for reading) in order to fully understand their texts which are written in a language which for the majority is an additional language (AL), has led to a re-evaluation of current practices. Two research instruments were used to obtain data: the receptive vocabulary levels test (VLT) and the test of academic literacy levels (TALL). Findings paint a bleak picture of English mid frequency word knowledge of first year students at UNAM. Data also showed that not all students who enter university have adequate vocab...

2013

Many researchers have tried to assess the number of words adults know. A general conclusion which emerges from such studies is that vocabularies of English monolingual adults are very large with considerable variation. This variation is important given that the vocabulary size of schoolchildren in the early years of school is thought to materially affect subsequent educational attainment. The data is difficult to interpret, however, because of the different methodologies which researchers use. The study in this paper uses the frequencybased vocabulary size test from Goulden et al (1990) and investigates the vocabulary knowledge of undergraduates in three British universities. The results suggest that monolingual speaker vocabulary sizes may be much smaller than is generally thought with far less variation than is usually reported. An average figure of about 10,000 English words families emerges for entrants to university. This figure suggests that many students must struggle with the comprehension of university level texts.

STELLENBOSCH PAPERS IN LINGUISTICS, 2016

The present study explores academic vocabulary knowledge, operationalised through the Academic Word List, among first-year higher education students. Both receptive and productive knowledge and the proportion between the two are examined. Results show that while receptive knowledge is readily acquired by first-year students, productive knowledge lags behind and remains problematic. This entails that receptive knowledge is much larger than productive knowledge, which confirms earlier indications that receptive vocabulary knowledge is larger than productive knowledge for both academic vocabulary (Zhou 2010) and general vocabulary (cf. Laufer 1998, Webb 2008, among others). Furthermore, results reveal that the ratio between receptive and productive knowledge is slightly above 50%, which lends empirical support to previous findings that the ratio between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge can be anywhere between 50% and 80% (Milton 2009). This finding is extended here to academic vocabulary; complementing Zhou's (2010) study that investigated the relationship between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge without examining the ratio between them. On the basis of these results, approaches that could potentially contribute to fostering productive knowledge growth are discussed. Avenues worth exploring to gain further insight into the relationship between receptive and productive knowledge are also suggested.

Revista de Lenguas Modernas, 2019

This article examines the amount of academic vocabulary used by fourth year students in a B.A. in English and B.A. English Teaching. The writer explains how academic vocabulary can be measured and the benefits it provides. This article contains a brief analysis of academic vocabulary used in 46 final research papers. Based on these results, the writer explains that, although students display a good range of academic vocabulary, curriculum programs should incorporate a tangible and substantial vocabulary teaching component.

It has been established that ESL learners' vocabulary knowledge correlates highly to their general proficiency in English. The vocabulary size of ESL learners is seen as an essential aspect of readiness of first-year students to adapt to the university learning environment especially when English is used as the medium of instruction. Owing to this reason a study was conducted among 156 diploma level students from the faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying of a public university in Malaysia to determine their level of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge in their first year of study at the university. Vocabulary Levels Test Version 1 by Nation (1990) at 2000, 3000, 5000-word and University Word levels as well as Vocabulary-size Test (Laufer & Nation, 1999) at 2000 and 3000-word levels were administered to seven groups of students (between 18-26 students per group) to measure their receptive and productive vocabulary respectively. The tests were chosen based on the estimates made by Nation (1990) that tertiary (advanced) level ESL learners should have acquired a minimum productive English vocabulary of 2000 to 3000 word families for use in speaking and writing and a slightly larger receptive vocabulary of 3000 to 5000 word families in order to participate effectively in academic discourse.