Research • Room 203 • 16:25
A root analytic approach to academic word lists
Developing Student Skills (Vocab, Grammar, Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking) • Academic Word Lists
Inspired by research in corpus linguistics and the analysis of English academic discourse, both spoken and written, there has been a notable growth in the use of academic word lists in the field of English for academic purposes. These lists generally purport to group together the most commonly occurring words for understanding academic English, so are often deemed essential for university preparatory studies for prospective international students.
In response to this, at times, bewildering array of lexical lists, this current research proposes a root analytic approach whereby the most frequently occurring roots are used as a way of finding the common ground among the different word lists. This reductive analysis promises to produce a more manageable lexical chunk with interesting implications for how students study vocabulary and how teachers select study materials.
About David
David Cedric currently works at Woosong University and has also taught at universities in South Africa, France, Taiwan and Turkey. He has presented frequently at International Language education and literature conferences.
