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University of Essex homepage Research Projects English Academic Vocabulary
Research Project

English Academic Vocabulary

Principal Investigator
Dr Sophia Skoufaki, Dr Bojana Petric, Mr Weizhong Wu and Dr Reka Jablonkai

Examining the learning and teaching of English academic vocabulary

Dr Sophia Skoufaki and colleagues examine the learning and teaching of English academic vocabulary, that is, vocabulary which is used across academic disciplines, through various angles. 

Since the ability to recognize and use academic vocabulary is necessary at all educational levels, research into how academic vocabulary is learned and taught can help make useful pedagogical recommendations to teachers from primary to university level.

Principal Investigators

Dr Bojana Petric

Dr Bojana Petric

Principal Investigator

Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck College

Dr Reka R. Jablonkai

Dr Reka R. Jablonkai

Principal Investigator

Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, University of Bath

Mr Weizhong Wu

Principal Investigator

University of Beihang, China

Polysemy in English academic vocabulary

Dr Sophia Skoufaki has examined the extent to which English academic words are polysemous. Findings suggest that a large proportion of academic words have multiple meanings.

Previous research suggests that the meaning senses of polysemous academic words are learned at a very slow pace even when they have been taught explicitly and repeatedly. Therefore, the instruction of the meaning senses of polysemous academic words is likely to be efficient not only if frequent polysemous academic words are taught, but also if the meaning senses which are used most often across disciplines are selected for teaching. Given that the frequencies of the meanings of frequent polysemous academic words are unknown, it is necessary to locate them for the benefit of academic vocabulary instruction. Dr Skoufaki is currently investigating the frequency breakdown of meaning senses of academic words in a large corpus of native-speaker English. This project is conducted in collaboration with Dr Bojana Petric from Birkbeck College, University of London.

 

Student in Library
Conference Presentation and Poster

View a recent conference presentation (.pdf) and a poster (.pdf) by the research team working on this project.

What are cognates? And what good are they for bilinguals? British students’ knowledge of polysemous academic English vocabulary

English academic vocabulary learning

Dr Skoufaki has developed a test of productive knowledge for polysemous academic words. She is currently validating it. This project is conducted in collaboration with Dr Bojana Petric of Birkbeck College, Mr Weizhong Wu of Beihang University in China, and Dr Reka Jablonkai at the University of Bath.

Given the tendency of academic vocabulary to be polysemous and students’ need to use their knowledge of academic vocabulary for reading, listening, speaking and writing tasks at university, another project examines native and non-native undergraduate students’ knowledge of the meanings that English polysemous academic words have.

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