Upload
emily-romero
View
219
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Collins Business Skills
Breaking down the AWLselecting and grading academic vocabulary
By Julie Moore
Collins Business Skills
Choosing academic vocabulary
• Selecting vocabularyAcademic Word List (AWL)Non-AWL vocabulary
• Grading vocabulary by levelSplitting into 3 levels
Collins Business Skills
The Academic Word List (AWL)
• Developed by Averil Coxhead (2000)• Based on corpus of academic texts• Excludes top 2000 common words• Excludes subject-specific words• 570 headwords• Word families > over 5000 individual items
Collins Business Skills
Non-AWL vocabulary
• Top end of the 2000 most common words• Less common senses of the top 2000 e.g. table
• IELTS topic vocabulary (past paper topics)
data commentary task
• Key academic concepts: cause & effect, time & sequence
• Syllabus vocabularye.g. Biology: bacteria, cell, nerve, virus
Collins Business Skills
Grading by level
• Level 1: StarterIELTS 4.0-5.5
• Level 2: ImproverIELTS 5.5-6.5
• Level 3: AdvancedIELTS 7.0+
Collins Business Skills
Grading by frequency
• AWL sublistsFrequency within academic corpus1-10 (1 = most frequent)
• Collins COBUILD frequency bandingFrequency in General English (5) = most frequent[-] (0) = least frequent
Collins Business Skills
Grading: easy cases
Word AWL sublist COBUILD band IELTS book
research 1 (5) 1
available 1 (5) 1
environment 1 (4) 1
analogy 9 - (1) 3
paradigm 7 - (1) 3
intrinsic 10 - (1) 3
Collins Business Skills
Issues & anomalies:
economy noun (5)
economic adjective (5)
economical adjective - (1)
economically adverb - (0)
economics noun (3)
economist noun (3)
uneconomical adjective - (0)
Collins Business Skills
Entry for level 1economy (economies)NOUN The economy of a country or region is the system by which money,industry, and trade are organized. ❍ Zimbabwe boasts Africa’s mostindustrialised economy. ❍ The Japanese economy grew at an annual rate of morethan 10 per cent. ❍ the region’s booming service economy
▶ collocations:the economy of somewherea modern/industrial/service/market economya booming/strong/weak economythe global/world/local/domestic economythe American/Canadian/Japanese/British economystimulate/revive/boost the economythe economy grows/recovers/shrinks/slows down
economic
ADJECTIVE Economic means concerned with the organization of themoney, industry, and trade of a country, region, or society. ❍ Poland’sradical economic reforms ❍ The pace of economic growth is picking up. ❍ thecurrent economic crisis
➔ see note at financial
Entry for level 2
Collins Business Skills
Issues & anomalies• General – academic frequencies
colleague – AWL sublist 10team – AWL sublist 9
• Splitting senses
conduct a. carry out level 2b. electricity level 3
• Semantic sets
advantage (/ 4), disadvantage (- / 2)
Collins Business Skills
The final breakdown
Book Total entries AWL entries* AWL %In each book
Level 1: Starter 789 112 14%Level 2: Improver 800 330 41%Level 3: Advanced 704 180 26%
*Total of 622 AWL entries across all three books: includes all 570 AWL headwords + 52 repeated headwords (e.g. economy appears in 1 &2)
Collins Business Skills
COBUILD Key Words for IELTS
Collins ELT: www.collinselt.com Julie Moore: www.juleswords.co.uk