Teaching the Academic Word List

The original intent of this post was aimed at discussing the advantages and disadvantages to learning the academic word list.  However, after some research, multiple sources questioning the validity of Coxhead’s Academic Word List (AWL) brought this author to a realization important for teachers of English as a second or foreign language, or indeed, teachers of learners of any foreign language.  That is, it is vital that teachers know not only about their students’ needs, but also be cognizant of the tools for teaching and how these tools can help teachers achieve their course objectives.  The following discussion will highlight this argument by reviewing the validity of Coxhead’s AWL.

The academic word list created by Coxhead was designed to pool together a list a word families that non-native learners of English would likely encounter in academic texts; these are word families that are not subject-specific enough to be found across multiple areas of research, and these were also word families there were not included in the General Service List (GSL), a list that compiled the 2,000 most frequent word families in the English language (Coxhead, 2000).  Examples of these words include: analyze, approach and assess (Coxhead, 2000, p. 232).  As one can easily see, these are words that are likely to appear in texts within most, if not all, academic subjects.  It is this list that is used by many English programs that are intended to prepare non-native speakers of English for university life in an English speaking country, such as the many Intensive English Programs found throughout countries who native language is English.

But to what extent is the AWL actually useful to students?  Is it useful to all students, or a specific set of students?  Coxhead makes a few key assumptions in creating the AWL.  By not including words from the GSL (Coxhead, 2000), she presumes that students who might use the AWL are already familiar with the GSL.  But as Martinez et al (2009) points out, there are such situations where non-native English speakers learn English as they need it; specifically, there are students in Latin America who learn English solely in order to read and do basic research in English, and these students may not know the words on the GSL.  This further reiterates the necessity for teachers to know their students, as well as developing course goals and objectives that will best serve students.  If students, such as those to which Martinez et al (2009) refers, are not familiar with the GSL, then teaching them the AWL may not be as useful as one might hope.  Instead, these students, with their limited exposure to English, may need extra vocabulary to supplement the AWL so that they are introduced to the vocabulary that will aid them in doing research in English.  Durrant (2009) similarly argued that even if students were familiar with word families from the GSL, they may not be familiar with the usage of these words within the context of academic texts (p. 164).  He also found that a majority of the words on a collocation list he created from a collection of research articles were from the GSL, which further indicates that if students are not familiar with the GSL, or if they are familiar with the word family from the GSL, but not the specific use, these word usages will also have to be addressed when teaching academic vocabulary.

In addition, Coxhead (2000) expects that her AWL, when combined with the GSL, will cover approximately 86% of academic texts, with the AWL itself covering 10% (p. 222).  However, the study done by Martinez et al (2009) regarding agriculture found that the GSL plus the AWL only accounted for approximately 77% (p. 188), a figure that is much lower than the 86% figure given by Coxhead (2000). Hancioğlu et al (2008) found, along the same lines as Martinez et al., that the AWL coverage of academic texts varies according to the subject area.  While not a large difference at 13.8% to 16.1% coverage (Hancioğlu et al, 2008, p. 471), this still suggests that some academic areas are covered better than others.  Does this suggest a bias in the AWL, or does this simply mean that certain academic areas have more specialized terminology than others?

If certain academic areas do have more specialized terminology than others, this could imply a couple different things.  First, it has the possibility to call into question the advantages for teaching the AWL.  It may not be a catch all vocabulary list for students who are looking to learn word families to assist them in reading academic texts.  Much like Vongpumivitch et al (2009) suggests, it may be better to expose students not just to the AWL, but also word lists specific to the academic area they wish to pursue.  However, this would be an option best suited for a classroom where all the students are in the same field; in a classroom where there are students who plan to study in different fields (e.g. engineering, linguistics, and agriculture) it would become more difficult for the teacher to supplement the AWL with subject-specific word lists for each academic discipline represented in the class.  Secondly, and to take the first implication further, if certain academic areas do have more specialized terminology, it could be argued that word lists specific to each academic discipline would better suit ESL or EFL students, and that these lists could also include word families from the AWL that are most relevant to the academic discipline in question.  And if there is indeed a bias in the AWL, the latter implication may be a solution in addressing that bias.  Nevertheless, teachers who are contemplating exposing their students to the AWL must weigh these implications against their course goals and objectives by asking questions such as: (1) are my students from a single academic discipline?  (2) Would teaching the AWL best prepare them for studying their academic discipline? (3) Will they need to know word families from the AWL for other reasons? (4) Will they be exposed to more specialized vocabulary in the future?

Durrant (2009) argues that one shortcoming of Coxhead’s AWL is a lack of collocations.  This is further highlighted by Hancioğlu et al (2008) who says, “knowing any word in depth involves knowing other words” (p. 460, emphasis in original).  That is, it is simply not enough to know words from the AWL – a learner must also know the words that go with those words from the AWL in order to achieve maximum reading comprehension.  Durrant (2009) found that the majority of the collocations across five different subject areas were grammatical collocations.  He maintains that these grammatical collocations are important to learners, as they can indicate certain patterns within academic writing (p. 163).  Again, such information would be valuable to teachers of learners of foreign languages.  If one of the course goals were, for example, “Students will read and comprehend research articles in their chosen field,” then it might be useful to teach collocations in addition to the AWL, and perhaps even the GSL.  However, if a course goal were, “Students will know 80% of Coxhead’s AWL,” collocations may not be necessary to teach.

Although Coxhead’s Academic Word List was created to assist English language learners in their ability to read academic texts, this list is not without its detractors.  It has been criticized for its exclusion of words from the GSL (Martinez et al, 2009; Durrant, 2009), its coverage of words in academic texts (Hancioğlu et al, 2008; Martinex et al, 2009; Vongpumivitch et al, 2009), and  its exclusion of collocations (Durrant, 2009).  This does not necessarily mean that the AWL should not be taught in classrooms.  It does, however, provide teachers of second or foreign languages with a viable example as to why knowing their students, their students’ needs as well as how certain tools (e.g. the AWL) can assist them in achieving their course goals is extremely important.  In order to be successful in teaching, one must not only stay informed, but also be able to weigh the pros and cons of a specific tool or activity against the ultimate goals and objectives of a course in order to make a decision as to whether the tool or activity should be utilized in the language classroom.

References

Coxhead, A. (2000). A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly , 213-238.

Durrant, P. (2009). Investigating the viability of a collocation list for students of English for academic purposes. English for Specific Purposes , 157-169.

Hancioğlu, N., Neufeld, S., & Eldridge, J. (2008). Through the looking glass and into the land of lexico-grammar. English for Specific Purposes , 459-479.

Martinez, I. A., Beck, S. C., & Panza, C. B. (2009). Academic vocabulary in agriculture research articles: A corpus-based study. English for Specific Purposes , 183-198.

Vongpumivitch, V., Ju-yu, H., & Yu-Chia, C. (2009). Frequency analysis of the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and non-AWL content words in applied linguistics research papers. English for Specific Purposes , 33-41.