A High Frequency Word List for Political Sciences
Recent research favors specific academic wordlists over a general academic wordlist for preparing university students to read and publish academic papers in English. Although researchers have developed wordlists for various disciplines, some academic fields do not enjoy a well-developed technical...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin,
2023-10-01
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| Series: | Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://jmrels.journals.ikiu.ac.ir/article_2936_90ae6705e96bf902a1afab268ce29155.pdf |
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| Summary: | Recent research favors specific academic wordlists over a general academic
wordlist for preparing university students to read and publish academic papers
in English. Although researchers have developed wordlists for various
disciplines, some academic fields do not enjoy a well-developed technical
wordlist. The present study aimed at developing and evaluating a specific
academic wordlist for political sciences. A 3.5-million-word corpus of political
sciences papers created and analyzed in order to develop the Politics Academic
Word List (PAWL). The list included 2000 word families which were selected
across and beyond the BNC/COCA wordlist based on frequency and range
criteria. The word families enjoying an aggregate frequency of a hundred or
more in the corpus and a minimum frequency of 10 in at least four of the seven
sub-corpora were incorporated into the wordlist. The PAWL accounted for over
88% of the running words in the Politics Academic Corpus (PAC) and
outperformed the list of General Service List (GSL) plus Academic Word List
(AWL) words in coverage by 3 percent, despite containing 556 fewer word
families. The study corroborates the value of a subject specific wordlist as a
more fruitful source for academic vocabulary learning. Pedagogical
implications and suggestions for further research are discussed. |
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| ISSN: | 2676-5357 |