Using a Corpus-Based Approach to Select Medical Vocabulary for an ESP Course: The Case for High-Frequency Vocabulary

Quero, Betsy; Coxhead, Averil

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70214-8_4

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This finding means that TCM technical vocabulary has a large number of shared items with the high frequency vocabulary, indicating that general high-frequency vocabulary is an indispensable part of the TCM discipline-specific word list. Quero and Coxhead (2018) also identified a similar vocabulary pattern in medicine, in which they found that around 15% of first to the third 1,000 BNC/COCA word families have a medical meaning. Second, Study 3 reveals that some TCM learners had not mastered all the general high-frequency words in the TCM technical word list.…”

Section: Should Technical Words From General High-frequency Vocabulary Be Included In the Discipline-specific Word Lists?mentioning

confidence: 77%

“…Fraser (2009) found that pharmacology employed a considerable number of general high-frequency words as technical vocabulary. Likewise, general high-frequency vocabulary has been found to be frequently used to lexicalize the technical knowledge in law (Tiersma, 1999), in medicine (Hsu, 2013;Quero & Coxhead, 2018), in engineering (Watson Todd, 2017) and in plastics (Pueyo & Val, 1996).…”

Section: The Importance Of Technical Words From General High-frequency Bandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating knowledge and use of technical vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Lu¹

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<p>This research investigates the nature of vocabulary, especially technical vocabulary, in the specialized discipline of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is an important area of higher education. It consists of three linked studies in correspondence to three research aims using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Study 1 addressed the questions of what kinds of words constitute TCM lexis given its origin, and what is the vocabulary load of English-medium texts in this discipline. To answer these questions, a series of lexical analyses was conducted on three corpora: theory-based and practice-based textbook corpora and a journal article corpus, which reflect the main areas of reading for TCM students. The results showed that while high, mid and low-frequency vocabulary make up a fairly large proportion of these texts, other lexical items such as abbreviations, loan words, medical words, proper nouns, and compounds also feature in them, but in differing proportions depending on the text types. Further, this study found that a large vocabulary of 13,000 word families plus four supplementary lists and two TCM-specific lists is needed. This is the point which most TCM learners can read TCM textbooks and journal articles without vocabulary being a handicap. Study 2 looked more closely at the technical vocabulary in TCM. The nature of technical vocabulary was explored and TCM technical word lists of both single and multiword units were developed for learners and teachers in this discipline. A total of 2,778 word types were selected for the TCM technical word list based on the criteria of relative keyness in the TCM Corpora compared to a general written English corpus, meaningfulness, and frequency. The list provided 36.65% coverage of the corpora from which it was developed. In addition, a TCM technical lexical bundle list with 898 bundles was developed to supplement the technical word list. The findings suggested that lexical bundles play an essential role in creating meaning and structure of TCM discourse. Thus, they should be regarded as a basic linguistic construct since some technical vocabulary needs to be seen in bundles rather than in single words. The last study bridged the gap between corpus-based word lists and the actual ESP vocabulary learning context by way of investigating learners’ understanding of the technical words from the technical word list generated from the second study. Results suggested that learners faced different challenges in technical vocabulary learning depending on their linguistic backgrounds. Specifically, Chinese learners had great difficulty with technical words from the lower-frequency bands of BNC/COCA word lists, while Western learners encountered challenges with loan words borrowed from Chinese. As a result, a certain divergence between the Western and Chinese TCM learners’ understanding of technical words was manifested. These findings indicate that a pedagogically useful word list should be adaptable to learners from different linguistic backgrounds. Drawing on these findings, this thesis also provides methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical implications so that the TCM learners can gain better support in their specialized English vocabulary learning. They can also enable the teachers and course designers to better scaffold their students’ vocabulary development.</p>

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Section: Should Technical Words From General High-frequency Vocabulary Be Included In the Discipline-specific Word Lists?mentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: The Importance Of Technical Words From General High-frequency Bandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating knowledge and use of technical vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Lu¹

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“…She argues that the characterization of medical vocabulary is much more complex than is generally implied by a simple wordlist, as well as that the vocabulary of medical English is best regarded as a continuum based on absolute and relative frequency (Panocová, 2017: 41, 106). Similarly to Quero (2015), Quero and Coxhead (2018) attempt at identifying high-frequency medical vocabulary using multiple corpora of medical written texts, including some general wordlists, and integrating these corpus-based findings (in the form of a specialized wordlist) into an ESP (reading) course for medical students to help them start reading medical textbooks more efficiently. Hsu (2018) explores the vocabulary of English-medium traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) textbooks, with the aim of developing a TCM English wordlist as a reference for English for Chinese Medicine purposes.…”

Section: The Use Of Corpora In Esp/emp Vocabulary Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Collocational Behavior of the Nouns Deformity and Malformation in Medical English

Tomic¹

2021

ESP Today

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This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of some aspects of the collocational behavior of the nouns deformity and malformation in the context of English for Medical Purposes (EMP). The aim was to determine which nominal and adjectival lexical items denoting or relating to the category of human body parts the two nouns exclusively or predominantly collocate with within three different patterns, namely 'modifiers of deformity/malformation', 'deformity/malformation of', and 'deformity/malformation in' in the English Web Corpus 2015 available in the Sketch Engine software. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the collocational information retrieved from all three patterns indicate that, despite the fact that there are collocates common to both deformity and malformation, deformity tends to co-occur with nominal and adjectival lexical items which denote or are related to parts of the human musculoskeletal system and the hard(-tissue) structures, while malformation has a tendency to co-occur with nouns or noun phrases and adjectives denoting or relating to (parts of) the internal organs of the human body and its soft(-tissue) structures. The paper also offers some pedagogical implications for EMP teaching and learning.

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“…Because it is difficult for language learners to study specialized terminology in isolation, teachers must encourage students to develop skills in using strategies to comprehend the vocabulary they encounter [2]. In English, words associated with specific areas of science have special meanings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Implementation of Taxation Accounting Dictionary: Seizing Technical Terms in English for Specific Purposes

Handayani¹,

Sukerti²,

Wicaksana³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the International Conference on Applied Science and Technology on Social Science 2022 (iCAST-SS 2022)

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The dictionary of taxation accounting terms plays an important role for vocational students as an independent learning tool as it provides a specific list of vocabulary to support their study compared to a general dictionary. This learning media was developed based on the adaptation of the ADDIE Model (E. Forest, 2014). The implementation phase was carried out using an experimental research method applied to students majoring in Taxation Accounting. Prior to and following the use of independent learning media in the learning process, quantitative data were gathered from the results of pre-test and post-test. The integrated media is a dictionary of tax accounting terms that is equipped with an online self-evaluation feature through Quizizz application. To determine the effect of using a dictionary on improving student achievement, the results of the pre-test and post-test assessments were analyzed using the SPSS statistical program. The One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test was used to test the normality of the pre-and post-test results, and the paired sample t-test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in the students' performance before and after the use of the dictionary. Meanwhile, scale-type questions from an online survey in the form of a google form were used to collect qualitative data and the results were analyzed to determine student perceptions of learning academic reading and competencies. The questionnaire responses highlight that students had some difficulty comprehending academic texts on taxation and accounting due to the complex vocabulary. According to statistical analysis, the dictionary combined with interactive practice via the digital platform Quizizz had a positive impact on student achievement.

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Using a Corpus-Based Approach to Select Medical Vocabulary for an ESP Course: The Case for High-Frequency Vocabulary

Cited by 16 publications

References 20 publications

Investigating knowledge and use of technical vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Investigating knowledge and use of technical vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine

A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Collocational Behavior of the Nouns Deformity and Malformation in Medical English

The Implementation of Taxation Accounting Dictionary: Seizing Technical Terms in English for Specific Purposes

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