Transcript academic_word_lists

Academic Vocabulary and
Grammar
Academic Word Lists
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:
Area
Factor
Benefit
Issue
Define
Research
Environment
Vary
 SUBLIST 10 with the less frequent words:
Adjacent
Notwithstanding
Forthcoming
Panel
Integrity
Persistent
Levy
So-called
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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
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The word families for each SUBLIST are divided into six groups
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There are three exercises for each word family
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Many of the exercises include different derivations for the respective
word
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Each level should be finished before moving on to the next
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 http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/headwords.html &
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/awl/sublists.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
AWL SUBLIST
Coverage of Academic Corpus
(%)
Pages per Repetition in the
Academic Corpus
1 (60 families)
3,6 %
4
2 (60 families)
1,8 %
8
3 (60 families)
1,2 %
12
4 (60 families)
0.9 %
15
5 (60 families)
0,8 %
19
6 (60 families)
0,6 %
24
7 (60 families)
0,5 %
30
8 (60 families)
0,3 %
49
9 (60 families)
0,2 %
67
10 (30 families)
0,1 %
82
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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 comovement 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
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“The plans include planting trees and hedges to protect crops from
grazing animals and wind erosion.”
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Understanding of the meaning
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“It's necessary to protect crops from erosion, so erosion has a
negative meaning.”
 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
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
 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
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
2.2 The Revised List
 http://jbauman.com/gsl.html &
http://www.auburn.edu/~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
 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/wordlists.htm
 The knowledge of the GSL and the AWL will increase the
understanding of academic texts extensively
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
 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.html
4. Sources
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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.html
http://www.logixlab.com/wordlist.htm
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/exercises.htm
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/learning.htm
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/wordlists.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.html
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