Academic Vocabulary and Grammar

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Academic Vocabulary and Grammar

• Academic Word Lists

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Structure

• 1. Academic Word List (AWL)
• 1.1 Definition
• 1.2 The Lists
• 1.3 The Purpose of AWL
• 1.4 Some Examples for AWL
• 1.5 Occurrence and Usage of AWL
• 2. General Service List (GSL)
• 2.1 Definition
• 2.3 The Revised List
• 3. University Word List (UWL)
• 4. Sources

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1. Academic Word List (? AWL)

• 1.1 Definition
• Was acquired in 2000 by Averil Coxhead
• One of several vocabulary lists
• The list includes 570 word families
• The word families are classified into 10
  SUBLISTS, which reflect word frequency and range
• It does not contain the approximately 2000
  English words, which are used the most

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• The AWL was developed in the first place, to be
  used by teachers or students on an academic level
• It is useful/recommended for second-language
  learners, who want to study at an
  English-speaking institution
• To find out about what words should be included
  in the AWL, an analysis of academic journals,
  textbooks, course wordbooks, lab manuals and
  course notes was necessary
• The list, which appeared after the analysis,
  contained about 3,5 million words

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1.2 The Lists

• The 570 word families are classifies into 10
  SUBLISTS
• Those SUBLISTS are arranged by frequency
• ? SUBLIST 1 contains the most frequent words (
  analyze), SUBLIST 10 the words, which are used
  the least frequent ( adjacent)
• SUBLIST 1 contains the 60 most common words in
  AWL
• SUBLIST 2 the next 60
• Each SUBLIST consists of 60 word families, except
  SUBLIST 10, which involves only 30

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Examples

• SUBLIST 1 with the most frequent words
• SUBLIST 10 with the less frequent words

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1.3 The Purpose of AWL

• The words of the AWL are important for students,
  who plan to study at an English-speaking college
  or university
• The words of AWL often appear in newspapers,
  magazines, novels,
• The AWL is very useful to improve vocabulary
  skills
• Students get a much better understanding of the
  range and meaning of vocabulary
• AWL is also very important, to see the different
  derivations of the word families (? verb, noun,
  adjective, adverb)

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1.4 Some Examples for AWL

• http//web.uvic.ca/gluton/awl/id17.htm
• The word families for each SUBLIST are divided
  into six groups
• There are three exercises for each word family
• Many of the exercises include different
  derivations for the respective word
• Each level should be finished before moving on to
  the next

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• http//www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/headwords.h
  tml http//www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/subli
  sts.html
• The headwords of the AWL are the stem for the
  words
• The number after each headword is the SUBLIST,
  the word family is in
• The SUBLISTS contain the word families, the word,
  which is used the most appears in Italics

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1.5 Occurrence and Usage of AWL

• The occurrences of AWL within the whole Academic
  Corpus and the number of pages a student needs to
  read, to encounter the words

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• The Burns and Mitchell technique of dating
  business cycles relied primarily on two sorts of
  information the descriptive evidence from
  business publications and general business
  conditions indices, and the "specific cycles"
  found in many individual series and the tendency
  for turning points to sometimes cluster at
  certain dates.  Based on this information, a set
  of reference cycle dates were selected that
  specified the turning points in "aggregate
  economic activity".  A key feature of the Burns
  and Mitchell approach was to focus on the amount
  of cyclical co-movement or coherence among a
  large number of economic variables.  This
  co-movement is the prime characteristic of their
  definition of the business cycle  "...a cycle
  consists of expansions occurring at about the
  same time in many economic activities, followed
  by similarly general recessions, contractions,
  and revivals which merge into the expansion phase
  of the next cycle...in duration business cycles
  vary from more than one year to ten or twelve
  years..." (Burns and Mitchell, 1946, p 3).

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How to use the words in the AWL

• Students should read academic texts and listen to
  academic lectures and discussions
• Students should have the possibility to speak in
  academic discussions and write academic texts, in
  which they use the academic vocabulary
• Students should directly use and learn words from
  the lists ? they should learn them like normal
  vocabulary for any language, besides that they
  should also read academic texts

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Example of how to study the words of the AWL

• 1. Search for an interesting text
• 2. Comprehension of the text
• 3. Search and selection for the academic words in
  the text
• The plans include planting trees and hedges to
  protect crops from grazing animals and wind
  erosion.
• Understanding of the meaning
• It's necessary to protect crops from erosion, so
  erosion has a negative meaning.

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• Contemplation of the other words it is used with
• Erosion used in the phrase wind erosion
• Contemplation of the grammar of the word
• erosion used as singular, no article, erosion
  is an uncountable noun
• 4. For more information of the word, a dictionary
  should be used
• 5. If the use of the academic word is understood,
  an own sentence should
• be created

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2. General Service List (? GSL)

• 2.1 Definition
• GSL provides basic vocabulary of English in order
  of frequency
• It was first created in 1953, by West
• List was a set of 2000 selected words for people,
  who wanted to study English
• Words were selected by frequency
• This GSL was configured by headwords, which
  represented a word family

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• Every headword was in alphabetical order, besides
  that it appeared with brief definitions and
  example sentences
• Each word came with a number, which represented
  the occurrence per 5 million words as well as
  with a percentage number for each meaning
• The words were graded by their frequency numbers
• The list has been used for several decades, but
  nowadays it is rather out of date

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Problems, which make it hard to use the list
nowadays

• It was problematic to discover, how many words
  this GSL contained
• For example, the word EFFECT was followed by a
  set of words
• effective, effectively, efficient, efficiency,
  efficiently
• Also the transcription of the words was
  interminable
• It was hard to state, whether the frequency
  numbers should be added to the headwords before
  or after the ranking of the words
• Another problem was the written material, from
  which the frequencies were taken ? 1938 and 1949

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2.2 The Revised List

• http//jbauman.com/gsl.html http//www.auburn.ed
  u/nunnath/engl6240/wlistgen.html
• List was created by Baumann and Culligan in 1995
• It is ranked by frequency order
• To establish the number of frequencies, the Brown
  Corpus was used
• This GSL provides 2284 words

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• The list contains all headwords and derived forms
  from the original GSL
• The headwords are classified into word families,
  which are based on levels 1 to 4 and ranked
  according to the frequency numbers
• The list appears with rank number, frequency
  number and the word
• GSL with SUBLISTS can be found on
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/wordli
  sts.htm
• The knowledge of the GSL and the AWL will
  increase the understanding of academic texts
  extensively

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3. University Word List (? UWL)

• Published in 1984
• It contains vocabulary, which is common in
  academic texts
• It contains about 808 words that are divided into
  11 levels
• The UWL was established for students, who have a
  basic knowledge of English and who planned to
  study at an English speaking university or
  college
• The UWL is linked to the GSL

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• The configuration of the list is similar to the
  AWL
• The UWL is divided into 11 levels, which include
  the words in alphabetical order
• Level 1 to 3 have the highest frequency
• Since 2000, the AWL replaces the UWL
• The UWL can be found on http//jbauman.com/UWL.ht
  ml

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4. Sources

• http//jbauman.com/gsl.html
• http//jbauman.com/UWL.html
• http//web.uvic.ca/gluton/awl/
• http//web.uvic.ca/gluton/awl/id17.htm
• http//www.auburn.edu/nunnath/engl6240/wlistgen.h
  tml
• http//www.logixlab.com/wordlist.htm
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/exerci
  ses.htm
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/learni
  ng.htm
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/wordli
  sts.htm
• http//www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb2/anglistik/Projekte
  /stubbs/awl.htm
• http//www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/info.html
• http//www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/sublists.ht
  ml

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• End