新学术词表(A-New-Academic-Vocabulary-List)

AppliedLinguistics2013:1–24OxfordUniversityPress2013doi:10.1093/applin/amt015ANewAcademicVocabularyList*DEEGARDNERandMARKDAVIESDepartmentofLinguisticsandEnglishLanguage,BrighamYoungUniversity*E-mail:[e-mail]rnewAcademicVocabularyList(AVL),derivedfroma120-million-wordacademicsubcorpusofthe425-million-wordCorpusofContemporaryAmericanEnglish(COCA;Davies2012).Wefirstexplorereasonswhyanewacademiccorelistiswarranted,andwhysuchalistisstillneededinEnglishlanguageeducation.WealsoprovideadetaileddescriptionofthelargeacademiccorpusfromwhichtheAVLwasderived,aswellastherobustfre-quencyanddispersionstatisticsusedtoidentifytheAVL.OurconcludingcasestudiesshowthattheAVLdiscriminatesbetweenacademicandothermaterials,andthatitcovers14%ofacademicmaterialsinbothCOCA(120million+words)andtheBritishNationalCorpus(33million+words).Thearticlecon-cludeswithadiscussionofhowtheAVLcanbeusedinsettingswhereacademicEnglishisthefocusofinstruction.Inthisdiscussion,weintroduceanewweb-basedinterfacethatcanbeusedtolearnAVLwords,andtoidentifyandinteractwithAVLwordsinanytextenteredinthesearchwindow.1.ACADEMICVOCABULARYKNOWLEDGEAcademicvocabularyknowledgeisrecognizedasanindispensablecomponentofacademicreadingabilities(VaccaandVacca1996;Corson1997;Biemiller1999;NagyandTownsend2012),which,inturn,havebeendirectlylinkedtoacademicsuccess,economicopportunity,andsocietalwell-being(Goldenberg2008;Ippolitoetal.2008;Jacobs2008).Thiscentralroleofacademicvocabu-laryinschoolsuccessistrueforbothnativeandnon-nativespeakersofEnglish,andatallgradelevels,includingprimary(Chall1996;Biemiller2010),middle-school(TownsendandCollins2009),secondary(VaccaandVacca1996),andhighereducation(Schmittetal.2011).Infact,controlofacademicvocabulary,orthelackthereof,maybethesinglemostimportantdiscriminatorinthe‘gate-keeping’testsofeducation:LNAT,UKCAT,HAT,BMAT,ELAT(inGreatBritain),SAT,ACT,GMAT,LSAT,GRE,MCAT(intheUSAandCanada),STAT,UMAT,GAT,GAMSAT(inAustraliaandNewZealand),TOEFL,Michigan(fornon-nativeEnglishspeakers),andmanyothers.Insufficientacademicvocabularyknowledgehasalsobeenstronglyassociatedwiththeoft-cited‘gap’inacademicachievementthatexistsbetweencertaingroupsofstudents—primarilytheeconomicallydisad-vantagedandEnglishlanguagelearners—andtheirgrade-levelpeers(HartandRisley1995;Chall1996;HiebertandLubliner2008;Neuman2008;Biemiller2010;Lesauxetal.2010;Townsendetal.2012).AppliedLinguisticsAdvanceAccesspublishedAugust2,2013atUniversityofWashingtononAugust31,2013—whatitscharacteristicsare,whyitisaproblemforlearners,howitshouldbetaught,andsoforth(e.g.Becketal.2002;Graves2006;Nation2008;Zimmerman2009;BaumanandGraves2010;Biemiller2010;Carter2012;NagyandTownsend2012;Gardner2013).Almostwithoutexception,expertsarecallingformoreexplicitinstructionofacademicvocabulary,includingmorefocusedlistsof‘core’academicvocabulary(ourcurrentstudy),aswellaslistsspecifictocertaindisciplinesofeducation(e.g.history,science,philosophy,politicalscience).Giventhesizeoftheacademicvocabularytask—forexample,averagehighschoolgraduatesknow75,000words(SnowandKim2007)—pedagogicalwordlistswillcontinuetobeimportantinacademicsettings.Suchlistsareusefulinestablishingvocabularylearninggoals,assessingvocabularyknow-ledgeandgrowth,analyzingtextdifficultyandrichness,creatingandmodify-ingreadingmaterials,designingvocabularylearningtools,determiningthevocabularycomponentsofacademiccurricula,andfulfillingmanyothercru-cialacademicneeds(cf.NationandWebb2011).Becausesomuchiscurrentlybasedonpedagogicalwordlists,itiscrucialthatthewordsinanyacademiclistbetrulyrepresentativeofcontemporaryacademiclanguage,andthattheybeidentifiedusingsoundmethodologicalprinciples—whichbringsustoourpre-sentstudyinvolvinganewAcademicVocabularyList(AVL).2.THENEEDFORANEWAVLDuringthe1970s,pioneeringscholarsintheareaofvocabularyproducedseverallistsofgeneralacademicwordsbasedonvarioussmallcorporaofaca-demicmaterials,primarilyconsistingoftextbooks(CampionandElley1971;Praninskas1972;Lynn1973;Ghadessy1979).Becauseoflimitedcomputingpoweratthetime,theselistswerecompiledbyhand.Somewerebasedonbasicfrequencyandrangecriteria(CampionandElley1971;Praninskas1972),whileotherswerebasedonstudentannotationsofwordstheydidnotunder-standintheirtextbooks(Lynn1973;Ghadessy1979).InanattempttoproduceamorerobustAVL,XueandNation(1984)combinedallfourofthelistsindicatedaboveintooneUniversityWordList(UWL).Thislistwaswidelyusedfor15years,gainingconsiderabletractioninlanguageeducationandresearchbythefactthatitwasassociatedwithearlyversionsofthepopularVocabularyProfileandRangecomputerprograms(NationandHeatley1994).Theseuser-friendlyprogramswereproducedandfreelydistributedbyNationandhiscolleagues.However,theneedforamorerepresentativeacademiclistwasexpressedbyCoxhead(2000)inaseminalarticledescribingherAcademicWordList(AWL):...asana