Selecting English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Science and Technology (EST) listening materials is a challenging task as many different criteria could inform that choice. This study ...examines the suitability of science and technology documentaries for EAP and EST listening based on a corpus of 100 such documentaries. Departing from the premise that criteria such as thematic suitability, appeal and visual support for the vocabulary presented, as well as the fact that they are delivered in standard English, might recommend science and technology documentaries for this purpose, we further explore their lexical profile, lexical density and speech rate, so as to pass a more informed judgement in this regard. The results obtained are compared against those for academic lectures in general and science lectures in particular. They show that science and technology documentaries may be reasonably followed with a vocabulary size of 3,000 to 4,000 words, similar to what is required for lectures. Additionally, this genre is a good source of academic and technical vocabulary. Its higher lexical density is compensated by its slower delivery than that of lectures. Based on this, we support the inclusion of science and documentary films as EAP and EST materials.
This study sheds light on the vocabulary complexity of various physics genres and how it affects reading and listening comprehension of the science of physics. We analysed the vocabulary frequency ...profile of seven physics genres: research articles, textbooks, lectures, magazines, popular books, TV documentaries and TED talks, to determine the presence of general-purpose, academic and technical vocabulary in them, as well as their vocabulary level and variation. The main research question was whether the vocabulary level of these genres could pose an impediment to typical native and non-native speakers of English in terms of their reading/listening comprehension, and, in general, how accessible these genres are vocabulary-wise. The results suggest that typical native speakers will struggle reading physics research and magazine articles, whereas typical non-native speakers will not read/listen to any of the genres at an optimal level, but will be able to read/listen to four of them at an acceptable level.
Abstract
With a view to advancing their students’ listening comprehension and vocabulary, English for Science teachers are frequently in search of new and interesting audio and video materials. TED ...Talks on science topics are a good option for this purpose. But just how suitable, vocabulary-wise, are they for English for Science learners? This study explores the lexical profile of TED Talks on science and compares it against non-science TED Talks and science academic lectures. We use a 5-million-word TED Talk corpus, with a 1.3-million-word science subsection. Of the two categories of TED Talks, it is the science ones that are lexically more similar to science academic lectures. Science TED Talks also feature significantly more technical vocabulary than non-science TED Talks. Reasonable listening comprehension is achieved at 4,000 words for science TED Talks, while ideal comprehension is achieved at 8,000 words for both categories. These results recommend science TED Talks for English for Science listening.
In this paper, we examine the lexical profile of literary academic articles with a view to determining how they differ from research articles in other disciplines and how the vocabulary level and ...complexity affect reading comprehension, particularly for non-native speakers of English. For this purpose, a corpus of 110 literary articles from reputable journals was compiled and compared against two corpora featuring the same number of articles: one consisting of research articles from Science, Technology and Medicine (STM), and the other comprising research articles from social sciences and other humanities. The results reveal that the lexical profile of literary academic papers is, as expected, more similar to social sciences and other humanities than to the STM field when it comes to the coverage of general-purpose vocabulary, vocabulary level and vocabulary diversity. Despite the lexical similarities to social sciences and other humanities, the vocabulary of literary academic papers is somewhat more complex and diverse than that found in them. The largest differences were noted with respect to the level of academic vocabulary, whose use is much sparser in literary studies than in all other fields. The pedagogical implications include advocating for refraining from reading literary academic articles earlier than postgraduate studies for non-native-speakers of English (with some exceptions), as their vocabulary level will generally be insufficient for those purposes. We also point to the limited value of teaching academic vocabulary to students of literary studies.
In this paper we critically analyse how the identity of the Western Balkans (WB) has been metaphorically conceptualised in the latest stages of the EU integration processes in a corpus of internet ...news articles recently posted in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Unlike the accession processes of the former membership candidates from Europe, the WB’s integration has proven to be a very long one, hindered by many, perhaps insurmountable obstacles and subject to a great deal of uncertainty regarding its final outcome. Although this process is predominantly conceptualised through the already established metaphors employed to depict such processes of the former member candidates (journey, house, circles/rings, family, etc.), their evaluative content is different, given that the roles and the positions of the EU and the WB are starkly asymmetrical, i. e. that the WB is deeply marginalised. We identified some new metaphors that this specific political situation has engendered, also reflecting the said asymmetry – the WB is perceived as a colony, self-imprisoned state, Trojan horse, victim of blackmail, immature person, experimenting ground and waste-collector for immigrants. These metaphors construct an image of the WB as that of the very inferior Other.
International academic contexts where English is used as a lingua franca (ELF) have become ubiquitous. ELF lectures have been studied from a number of perspectives, but they have not been lexically ...profiled. We depart from the assumption that the lexical profile of academic lectures delivered in international settings may differ from that of lectures delivered in Anglophone contexts, and that these differences have pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of academic English from an ELF-perspective. We lexically profile a corpus of fifty university lectures delivered in English in five European countries and compare them against sixty-two lectures delivered in English in the U.S. We find that 3,000 words are needed for good listening comprehension in both sets of lectures, while ideal comprehension is reached at 11,000 words for international and 7,000 words for U.S. lectures, which suggests differences between the two in terms of variation in low-frequency vocabulary. Some function words are much more frequent in international than in U.S. lectures. International lectures also feature less high-frequency and more mid-frequency academic vocabulary than U.S. lectures. These differences mostly reflect the use of ELF-specific communicative strategies in international lectures. Focusing on them and potentially making academic ELF-specific word lists may ensure the more efficient teaching of academic English from an ELF-perspective.
In compiling both Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) word lists for foreign language learners and LSP dictionaries, the headword-selection process is of paramount importance. LSP word lists and LSP ...dictionaries will function effectively if they contain appropriate terms and register items, i.e. the lexical items that end users need. In this paper, we first present corpus-based LSP word lists, with special emphasis on how they were compiled. In the process, the make-up and size of the specialised corpus are important, as is the choice of the headword selection methods used. Among the possible criteria are word frequency, keyness, specialised occurrence, range, and dispersion, as well as some non-corpus linguistic methods that are more rarely applied. A greater variety of methods is used for compiling headword lists for LSP dictionaries, and of the corpus linguistic methods, frequency is typically solely applied. The article compares headword selection procedures for LSP word lists and LSP dictionaries before discussing how they can mutually inform one another.
Bearing in mind that teachers often find themselves in a position where they have to produce their own teaching materials for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes, vocabulary profiling studies ...of certain genres may be of help in such situations. English for Science is an ESP field commonly taught around the world; however, despite this, the teaching resources for it are not as plentiful as the ESP teachers would like them to be. With this in mind, in this paper we study the vocabulary profile of science magazines, a genre that is generally written for non-expert audience and includes reports, news and opinions about science. We determine how complex the vocabulary of this genre is, using a corpus of approximately 230,000 running words, and define how many words are needed to reach the minimum reading comprehension level. We also determine how much high-frequency general, academic and scientific vocabulary this genre contains. Based on this, we draw conclusions on the target ESP audience these texts would be most useful for.
One potential source of authentic input for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Science and Technology (EST) listening could be science podcasts. In this study, we examine the ...vocabulary level of this genre, as well as the amount of the common specialized, i.e. academic and scientific vocabulary it contains. Additionally, we study its lexical density and speech rate. These properties are examined on a corpus of 126 science podcasts produced by the journal Nature, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the magazine Scientific American. These are compared against those determined for a corpus of lectures in general (the MICASE lectures) and a corpus of science lectures in particular (the MICASE’s science-lecture subsection). On the one hand, science podcasts were found to contain a good amount of both academic and scientific vocabulary, as well as to have a very similar lexical density to that of lectures. On the other hand, their vocabulary level and speech rate were somewhat higher than those of lectures. Based on the analysis, we recommend the use of science podcasts for both EAP and EST listening for advanced learners. For learners with lower proficiencies, vocabulary support and/or adjusting the speed of the science podcasts is advised.
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