Document Type : Research Paper

Author

English Translation Department, Humanities Faculty, Hazrat-e Masoumeh University, Qom, Iran

Abstract

University students are mainly advised to master the words in West’s General Service List (GSL) and Coxhead’s Academic Word List (AWL) in order to be able to read their academic texts easily and effectively. However, there are too many words in the two lists and a large number of them seem to be of less frequency in many academic disciplines; moreover, there are many important general and academic words which are missing in the two lists. The present study explored a corpus of psychology texts containing 3.4 million running words to work out the most frequent words used in psychology, a less investigated discipline. The corpus was analyzed by some text analysis software (TextStat and TextAnalys) and a list of 1587 most frequent word families was developed for psychology. The list included general English and academic words and no technical words of psychology. The frequency of GSL and AWL word families was investigated in the corpus to find out the GSL and AWL words highly frequent in psychology texts and also other high frequency words of psychology which are absent in the two lists. The results revealed that 1077 GSL and 95 AWL word families were of low frequency in psychology texts and there were 189 high frequency general and academic words which are absent in the GSL and AWL. The coverage of the developed psychology word list over the corpus was shown to be 2.2% higher than that of GSL plus AWL, although it contained 983 fewer words.

Keywords

Allen, V. F. (1983). Techniques in teaching vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campion, M., & Elley, W. (1971). An academic vocabulary list. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research.
Chen, Q. & Ge, G. (2007). A corpus-based lexical study on frequency and distribution of Coxhead’s AWL word families in medical research articles (RAs). English for Specific Purposes, 26, 502-514.
Chung, T. (2009). The newspaper word list: A specialized vocabulary for reading newspapers. JALT Journal, 31(2), 159-182.
Cobb, T., & Horst, M. (2004). Is there room for an AWL in French? In P. Bogaards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language: Selection, acquisition, and testing (pp. 15-38). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Coxhead, A. & Demecheleer, M. (2018). Investigating the technical vocabulary of plumbing. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 84-97.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
Coxhead, A., Demecheleer, M. & McLaughlin, E. (2016). The technical vocabulary of Carpentry: Loads, lists and bearings. TESOLANZ Journal, 24, 38-71.
Dang, Y., Coxhead, A. & S. Webb. (2017). The Academic Spoken Word List. Language Learning, 67(3), 959–997.
D'Anna, C.A., Zechmeister, E.B. & Hall. J.W. (1991). Toward a meaningful definition of vocabulary size. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23, 109-122.
Engels, L., K. (1968). The fallacy of word counts. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 6, 213-231.
Esfandiari, R. & Moein, G. (2015). A corpus-driven food science and technology academic word list. Issues in Language Teaching, 4(2), 131-157.
Farrell, P. (1990). A lexical analysis of the English of electronics and a study of semi-technical vocabulary. CLCS Occasional Paper No.25 Trinity College.
Ghadessy, P. (1979). Frequency counts, word lists, and materials preparation: A new approach. English Teaching Forum, 17, 24-27.
Goulden, R., Nation, P. & Read, J.  (1990). How large can a receptive vocabulary be? Applied Linguistics, 11, 341-363.
Howatt, A. P. R. (1984). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hsu, W. (2018). The most frequent BNC/COCA mid- and low-frequency word families in English-medium traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) textbooks. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 98-110.
Hwang, K. (1989). Reading newspapers for the improvement of vocabulary and reading skills. Unpublished MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2007). Is there an "academic Vocabulary"? TESOL Quarterly, 41(2), 235-253.
Khani, R. & Tazik, K. (2013). Towards the development of an academic word list for applied linguistics research articles. RELC Journal, 44(2), 195-214.
Kwary, D. A. & Artha, A. F. (2017). The academic article word list for social sciences. MEXTESOL Journal, 41(4) 1-11.
Laufer, B. (2014). Vocabulary in a second language: selection, acquisition and testing: A commentary on four studies for JALT vocabulary SIG. Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, 3(2) 38-46.
Lei, L. & Liu, D. (2016). A new medical academic word list: A corpus-based study with enhanced methodology. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22, 42-53.
Martinez, I. A., Beck, S. & Panza, C.B. (2009). Academic vocabulary in agriculture: A corpus-based study. English for specific purposes, 28, 183-198.
Matsumoto, D. (2009). The Cambridge dictionary of psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moini, R. & Islamizadeh, Z. (2016). Do we need discipline-specific word lists? Linguistic academic word list (LAWL). Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 35(3), 65-90.
Mudraya, O. (2006). Engineering English: A lexical frequency instruction model. English for Specific Purposes, 25(2), 235-256.
Munoz, V. (2015). The vocabulary of agriculture semi-popularization articles in English: A corpus-based study. English for Specific Purposes, 39, 26-44.
Murphy, B. (2001). Words, words, words…. FELT Newsletter, 3(2), 18-21.
Nation, I. S. P. & Hwang, K. (1995). Where would general service vocabulary stop and special purposes vocabulary begin? System, 23(1), 35–41.
Nation, I. S. P. (2016). Making and using word lists for language learning and testing. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Nation, I. S. P., & Waring, R. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 6-19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nelson, M. (2000). A corpus-based study of business English and business English teaching materials. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Manchester, Manchester. Retrieved May, 24, 2003, from: http://www.kielikanava.com/thesis.html
Praninskas, J. (1972). American university word list. London:  
Richards, J.  (1974).  Word lists: Problems and prospects. RELC Journal, 5(2), 69-84.
Richards, J. C. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rivers, M.W. (1968). Teaching foreign language skills. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Seal, B.D. (1991). Vocabulary learning and teaching. In M. Celce-Murcia (ED.), Teaching English as a second and foreign language (pp.296-311). Boston, Massachusetts: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Sutarsyah, C. (1993). The vocabulary of economics and academic English. Unpublished MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Tongpoon-Patanasorn, A. (2018). Developing a frequent technical words list for finance: A hybrid approach. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 45-54.
Valipoori, L., & Nassaji, H. (2013). A corpus-based study of academic vocabulary in chemistry research articles. English for Academic Purposes, 12, 248-263.
Vongpumivitich, V., Huang, J., & Chung, Y. (2008). Frequency analysis of the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and non-AWL content words in applied linguistics papers. English for Specific Purposes, 28(1), 33-41.
Wang, J., Liang, S., & Ge, G. (2008). Establishment of a medical academic word list. English for Specific Purposes, 27(4), 442–458.
Ward, J. (2009). A basic engineering English word list for less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates. English for Specific Purposes 28, 170-182.
West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman.
Xue, G., & Nation, I. S. P. (1984). A university word list. Language Learning and Communication, 3, 215-229.
Yang, M. N. (2015). A nursing academic word list. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 27-38.