The Academic Word List 10 Years On: Research and Teaching Implications

TEACHING ISSUES The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of English language teaching Edited by DANA FERRIS University of California, Davis The Academic Word List 10 Years On: Research and Teaching Implications AVERIL COXHEAD Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand doi: 10.5054/tq.2011.254528 & It is 10 years since TESOL Quarterly published, ‘‘A New Academic Word List’’ (Coxhead, 2000; reprinted in Teubert & Krishnamurthy, 2007) The AWL is now widely used in English for academic purposes (EAP) classrooms in many countries, in a wide range of materials, in vocabulary tests, and as a major resource for researchers In this article I reflect on the impact of the Academic Word List (AWL) by looking at commonly asked questions about the list: What is the AWL? Is the AWL useful/ adequate for a range of learners’ needs? How can I help students learn academic vocabulary? What materials using the AWL are available? And finally, When are you going to update the AWL? WHAT IS THE AWL? The AWL is a list of 570 word families An example of a word family is benefit, beneficial, beneficiary, beneficiaries, benefited, benefiting, and benefits The word families in the AWL included stems plus all affixes up to and including Level Six of Bauer and Nation’s (1993) scale The list was developed using a written academic corpus of 3.5 million running words The corpus was divided into four discipline areas, arts, commerce, law, and science, each with approximately 875,000 running words The corpus contained 414 texts which were balanced for length as much as TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 45, No 2, June 2011 355 possible It contained textbooks, articles, book chapters, and laboratory manuals The main aim was that these materials should represent, as much as possible, the reading of first-year students at a university (Coxhead, 1998, 2000) Four key principles guided the selection of words for the AWL First, the 2,000 most frequent word families of West’s (1953) General Service List of English Words (GSL) would not be included in the count This decision was made because the purpose of the AWL was not general English but specifically academic vocabulary It was a controversial decision, because the GSL has been criticized for its age The GSL is yet to be replaced The three other selection principles were frequency, range, and uniformity The word families had to occur 100 times or more in each of the four disciplines of the corpus (frequency), in 15 or more of the subject areas (range), and over 10 times in the four disciplines (uniformity) The AWL is divided into 10 sublists The first sublist contains the 60 most frequent word families in the AWL, the second sublist contains the next 60 most frequent word families, and so on Coxhead (n.d.) has the headwords and sublists of the AWL TABLE Studies Investigating AWL Distribution in Texts Study Corpus Coxhead (2000a, Fiction 2000b) Coxhead (unreported) Newspapers Cobb & Horst (2004) Learned section of the Brown corpus (Francis & Kucera, 1979) Hyland & Tse (2007) Sciences, engineering, and social sciences, written by professional and student writers Chen & Ge (2007) Medical research articles Konstantakis (2007) Business Coxhead & Hirsh Science (2007) Ward (2009) Engineering Martı´nez, Beck, & Agricultural sciences Panza (2009) research articles Applied linguistics Vongpumivitch, Huang, & Chang research papers (2009) Li & Qian (2010) Finance Coxhead, Stevens, & Pathway series of secondTinkle (2010) ary science textbooks 356 Number of running words Percent coverage of the AWL 3.5 million 1.4 million 14, 283 4.5 11.60 3,292,600 10.6 190,425 million 1.5 million 10.073 11.51 8.96 271,000 826,416 11.3 9.06 1.5 million 11.17 6.3 million 279,733 10.46 7.05 TESOL QUARTERLY On average, the AWL covers 10% of the vocabulary in the written academic corpus it was based on Table documents the coverage of the AWL in a number of corpus-based studies over the last 10 years Table illustrates how the nature of a corpus can impact the coverage of the AWL In these studies, most, if not all, the AWL word families appear Note that the coverage figures of AWL over the various university-level corpora are consistently around 10% IS THE AWL USEFUL/ADEQUATE FOR A RANGE OF LEARNERS’ NEEDS? The purpose of the AWL was to help teachers of EAP classes to set goals for their students’ vocabulary learning Pre-university EAP classes in New Zealand are typically made up of learners from different language backgrounds and various subject areas The AWL has been the subject of some discussion in the literature recently, in terms of whether there really is a general academic vocabulary Hyland and Tse (2007) suggest that some of the words in the AWL have different meanings depending on the subject area They argue that teachers need to help students deepen their understanding of the nature and behavior of words in specific academic disciplines It is good to see such research throw light on the behavior of AWL words in context Future research needs to be based on more balanced corpora that represent a wider range of subjects within a university More work is also needed to establish whether words really are very different across different subject areas For example, is theory in biology not related at all to theory in psychology (Nation, personal communication, 17 January 2011)? A study by Coxhead (2011) illustrates how secondary teachers show keen awareness of everyday words occurring in everyday texts as well in more specialized texts and raise awareness for their students of a specialized meaning of an everyday word in their subject area (such as weight in physics) A number of subject-specific vocabulary lists have been developed recently to address the needs of particular learners (e.g., Wang, Liang, & Ge, 2008; Coxhead & Hirsh, 2007; Ward, 2009; Chung, 2009) This research tends to approach specialised vocabulary in different ways One is to use the GSL and AWL as base lists and build subject-specific lists from there (e.g., Coxhead & Hirsh, 2007) Another approach is to start from scratch, as Ward (2009) does with his basic list of engineering words Teachers need to take these different starting points into account because the same words could occur in different lists Cell, for example, is one of the most common words in both Wang et al.’s (2008) medical word list and Coxhead and Hirsh’s (2007) science list for EAP TEACHING ISSUES 357 Another use for the AWL is in testing The Vocabulary Levels Test contains a section using the AWL (see Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001; Coxhead, 2006; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2010) Other more pedagogically oriented work, such as Murphy and Kandil (2004), looks at the AWL and pronunciation In learner corpora research, we see a call from Paquot (2007) for an AWL that is more productively oriented, based on the language that learners themselves produce For more on the AWL in the context of other vocabulary research, see Nation and Webb (2010) and Schmitt (2010) HOW CAN I HELP STUDENTS LEARN ACADEMIC VOCABULARY? Just as the AWL was compiled in a principled way, it is important that any teaching and learning of vocabulary from lists (and in general) needs to be done in a principled way Coxhead (2006) contains a discussion on acquiring new words and working with the AWL using a principled approach Nation’s (2007) four strands create a balanced vocabulary program These four strands are meaning-focused input (that is, learning through reading and listening), meaning-focused output (learning through writing and speaking), language-focused learning (e.g., deliberate study of pronunciation, spelling, meaning, and grammar), and fluency development There should be equal opportunities for learning vocabulary across all of these strands Any teaching activity should actively engage learners in working with target vocabulary that matches one of these strands See Hirsh and Coxhead (2009) for more on working with the four strands and vocabulary lists One of the problems with developing a word list is that some learners and some teachers focus solely on working with the list alphabetically, for instance, starting at abandon and ending at widespread Along the way, they meet strings of words that look similar, such as commence, comment, commission, and commit See Nation (2000) on the dangers of learning words that look similar, and help on how to avoid these difficulties Another problem is that students might never find the words in context in materials they are reading They also might never practice the words in any meaningful way For example, learners might focus only on the spelling and meaning of words, but not on using the words themselves in speaking and writing The question of the AWL and lower-level EAP students has become more frequent in the last few years as universities in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain receive applications from language learners with lower levels of proficiency than in previous decades (Neil Harris, personal communication, January 2011) 358 TESOL QUARTERLY Secondary school teachers also often report AWL words occurring frequently in secondary school textbooks So far, as we saw in Table 1, the majority of research using the AWL has been carried out using university-level texts Coxhead, Stevens, and Tinkle (2010) suggested that secondary school science texts contain more high-frequency words and are therefore more reader friendly than university-level texts Despite this level of high-frequency words, students need a very large vocabulary to read secondary school science texts A great deal more research needs to be carried out with different corpora WHAT MATERIALS USING THE AWL ARE AVAILABLE? A wide range of paper-based and online materials and activities using the AWL are now available One major area of development is dictionaries that highlight AWL words Examples include Longman Exams Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Neungyule– Longman English–Korean Dictionary, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, and Oxford Student’s Dictionary of English Textbooks using the AWL include Contemporary Topics (Longman), Essential Academic Vocabulary: Mastering the Complete Academic Word List (Houghton Mifflin), English for Academic Success Series (Houghton Mifflin), Improve Your English Vocabulary (Dee Publications), Academic Word Power series (Heinle ELT), Schmitt and Schmitt’s (2005) well-principled Focus on Vocabulary: Mastering the Academic Word List (Longman), Inside Reading (Oxford University Press), Read This! (Cambridge University Press), and Academic Vocabulary in Use (Cambridge University Press) Many of these publications now have accompanying websites Other websites featuring the AWL include Haywood’s (n.d.-a) AWL Gapmaker, AWL Highlighter (n.d.-b), and AWL exercises Cobb’s (n.d.) outstanding Compleat Lexical Tutor website includes tools to find out which words from the AWL are in texts Coxhead and Byrd (2007) outline ways to use this website to focus on teaching and learning vocabulary for writing teachers For vocabulary exercises using the list, see Gillett (n.d.), Luton (n.d.), and Nuttall (n.d.) WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO UPDATE THE AWL? The answer to this question is not as simple as it appears First, the question of whether written academic language really changes a great deal in a decade is an interesting one Second, for the AWL to be reworked, the question of what would replace the GSL as a general vocabulary list needs to be addressed in a careful and principled way TEACHING ISSUES 359 The creation of one list, as we see with the AWL, has an impact on other lists that are based on it To conclude, 10 years on, I can honestly say that the AWL has had a far greater and more international impact that I ever imagined back in 1998 THE AUTHOR Averil Coxhead is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand She is interested in many aspects of second language lexical studies, including corpus linguistics and EAP, vocabulary use in writing, classroom tasks, vocabulary list development and evaluation, phraseology, and pedagogical approaches to lexis Her current research projects include vocabulary size measurements, vocabulary teaching and learning in secondary schools, and the collocations and phraseology of the AWL in written texts REFERENCES Bauer, L., & Nation, I S P (1993) Word families International Journal of Lexicography, 6, 253–279 doi:10.1093/ijl/6.4.253 Chen, Q., & Ge, C (2007) A corpus-based lexical study on frequency and distribution of Coxhead’s AWL word families in medical research articles English for Specific Purposes, 26, 502–514 doi:10.1016/j.esp.2007.04.003 Chung, T (2009) The newspaper word list: A specialised vocabulary for reading newspapers JALT Journal, 31(2), 159–182 Cobb, T (n.d.) The compleat lexical tutor Retrieved from http://www.lextutor.ca/ on 22 September 2010 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 (1998) The development and evaluation of an academic word list (Unpublished MA thesis) Victoria University, Wellington, Australia Coxhead, A (2000) A new academic word list TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213– 238(Reprinted: Critical concepts in linguistics, pp 123–149, in Corpus linguistics by W Teubert and R Krishnamurthy, Eds., 2007, Oxford, England: Routledge) Coxhead, A (2002a) The academic word list: A corpus-based word list for academic purposes In B Ketteman and G Marks (Eds.), Teaching and language corpora (TALC) 2000 conference proceedings Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Coxhead, A (2002b) Academic writing help pages In M Rundell (Ed.), Macmillan English dictionary (pp LA4 – A7) London, England: Macmillan Coxhead, A (2006) Essentials of teaching academic vocabulary Boston, MA: Heinle Cengage Coxhead, A (2011) Specialised vocabulary in secondary classrooms: Teachers’ perspectives Manuscript submitted for publication Coxhead, A (n.d.) The academic word list Retrieved from http://www.victoria.ac nz/lals/staff/averil-coxhead.aspx Coxhead, A., & Byrd, P (2007) Preparing writing teachers to teach the vocabulary and grammar of academic prose Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 129–147 doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.002 Coxhead, A., & Hirsh, D (2007) A pilot science word list for EAP Revue Franc¸aise de linguistique applique´e, XII (2) 65–78 360 TESOL QUARTERLY Coxhead, A., Stevens, L., & Tinkle, J (2010) Why might secondary science textbooks be difficult to read? New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 16(2), 35–52 Francis, W N., and Kucera, H (1979) A standard corpus of present-day edited American English, for use with digital computers Providence, RI: Department of Linguistics, Brown University Gillett, A (n.d.) Using English for academic purposes Retrieved from http://www uefap.com/vocab/vocfram.htm Haywood, S (n.d.-a) The academic word list gapmaker Retrieved from http://www nottingham.ac.uk/,alzsh3/acvocab/awlgapmaker.htm Haywood, S (n.d.-b) The academic word list highlighter Retrieved from http:// www.nottingham.ac.uk/,alzsh3/acvocab/awlhighlighter.htm Hirsh, D., & Coxhead, A (2009) Ten ways of focussing on science-specific vocabulary in EAP English Australia Journal, 25(1), 5–16 Hyland, K., & Tse, P (2007) Is there an "academic vocabulary"? TESOL Quarterly, 41(2), 235–253 Konstantakis, N (2007) Creating a business word list for teaching business English Elia, 7, 79–102 Li, Y., & Qian, D (2010) Profiling the academic word list (AWL) in a financial corpus System, 38, 402–411 doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.06.015 Luton, G (n.d.) Vocabulary exercises for the academic word list Retrieved from http://www.academicvocabularyexercises.com/ Martı´nez, I., Beck, S., & Panza, C (2009) Academic vocabulary in agriculture research articles English for Specific Purposes, 28, 183–198 doi:10.1016/ j.esp.2009.04.003 Murphy, J., & Kandil, M (2004) Word-level stress patterns in the academic word list System, 32(1), 61–74 doi:10.1016/j.system.2003.06.001 Nation, I S P (2000) Learning vocabulary in lexical sets: Dangers and guidelines TESL Journal, 9(2), 6–10 Nation, I S P (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press Nation, I S P (2007) The four strands Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1(1), 2–13 doi:10.2167/illt039.0 Nation, I S P., & Webb, S (2010) Researching and analyzing vocabulary Boston, MA: Heinle Cengage Nuttall, G (n.d.) Vocabulary exercises for the academic word list Retrieved from http://web.scc.losrios.edu/nuttalg/vocabularyresources Paquot, M (2007) Towards a productively-oriented academic word list In J Walinski, K Kredens, & S Gozdz-Roszkowski (Eds.), Corpora and ICT in language studies PALC 2005 [Lodz Studies in Language 13], (pp 127–140) Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang Schmitt, N (2010) Researching vocabulary Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan Schmitt, N., & Schmitt, D (2005) Focus on vocabulary New York, NY: Longman Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D., & Clapham, C (2001) Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test Language Testing, 18(1), 55–88 Vongpumivitch, V., Huang, J., & Chang, Y (2009) Frequency analysis of the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and non-AWL content words in applied linguistics research papers English for Specific Purposes, 28(1), 33–41 doi:10.1016/ j.esp.2008.08.003 Wang, J., Liang, S., & Ge, G (2008) Establishment of a medical academic word list English for Specific Purposes, 27, 442–458 doi:10.1016/j.esp.2008.05.003 TEACHING ISSUES 361 Ward, J (2009) A basic engineering English word list for less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates English for Specific Purposes, 28, 170–182 doi:10.1016/j.esp.2009.04.001 West, M (1953) A general service list of English words London, England: Longman, Green Applying L2 Lexical Research Findings in ESL Teaching KEITH FOLSE University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida, United States doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.254529 & English language learners face a debilitating lexical gap between the words they know and the words they need to know Although educated native speakers of English know approximately 20,000 word families (Nation, 2001), or roughly 70,000 words, one estimate of ELLs’ lexical needs is approximately 2,000 words to maintain conversations, 5,000 to read authentic texts, and perhaps 10,000 to comprehend challenging academic materials (Schmitt, 2000) Unfortunately, even well-educated ELLs may know less than a quarter of their native counterparts’ vocabulary (Laufer & Yano, 2001) Within the last 15 years, this lexical gap has prompted a number of useful studies addressing issues relevant to both learners and teachers Though much of this work has investigated reading (e.g., Cobb, 2008), lexical knowledge impacts all skill areas, including writing (Engber, 1995; Ferris, 1994), listening (Chang, 2007), and speaking (Joe, 1998) The purpose of this short article is to present several teaching applications from the current body of L2 vocabulary research This information focuses on four key pedagogical questions (Readers interested in research details should see the timeline of influential L2 vocabulary studies of vocabulary acquisition presented by Laufer [2009], the review of extant research on vocabulary instruction by Schmitt [2008], and the extensive vocabulary bibliography by year or topic at the Vocabulary Acquisition Research Group Archive [2011] at http://www.lognostics.co.uk/varga/.) PEDAGOGICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT L2 VOCABULARY RESEARCH Why Should Teachers Teach Vocabulary? Native speakers not learn most of their vocabulary through explicit instruction, so common wisdom in TESOL pedagogy has favored a 362 TESOL QUARTERLY