چکیده:
This small-scale study investigates (a) whether academic vocabulary compares indevelopment with vocabulary breadth and depth for Iranian ESP/EAP learners and,if the answer is positive, (b) whether this trend of development happens acrossproficiency levels. Fifty-seven graduate students served as the subjects who werealso divided into high and low groups based on whether they had acquired the mostfrequent 2,000 words. Multiple regression analysis results show much sharedvariance between breadth and depth tests, and academic vocabulary test for theparticipants as a whole group. Therefore, as learners’ vocabulary breadth and depthincrease, so does their academic vocabulary. A similar finding is also observed forthe high group and low group. However, the finding for the low group is contraryto our expectation. The results suggest more systematic vocabulary developmentfor the high group, less for the participants as a whole group, and least in the lowgroup. This investigation has some implications for language, and moreparticularly vocabulary, instruction for ESP/EAP purposes in Iran
خلاصه ماشینی:
Keywords: Academic Vocabulary; Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge;Language Proficiency; ESP/EAP Learners Introduction Different university disciplines require a high level of reading proficiency in English for the students to further succeed in their academic studies.
" A word includes many aspects to be gradually learned by language learners, such as its pronunciation, spelling, register, stylistic and morphological features (Haastrup & Henriksen, 2000; Nation, 1990; Richards, 1976), and knowledge of the word’s syntactic and semantic relationships with other words in the language, including collocational meanings and knowledge of antonymy, synonymy, and hyponymy (Chapelle, 1994; Henriksen, 1999; Read, 2000).
For the purpose of the study, the participants were once considered as a whole group and then divided into high and low proficient groups based on whether they had acquired the most frequent 2,000 words in VLT.
VLT a) includes levels of frequency and, as a result, difficulty, b) is a statistically reliable vocabulary measure (Read, 2000), c) is related to success in reading, writing, and general language proficiency as well as to academic achievement (Laufer, 1997), d) can provide efficient placement and admission in language teaching programs, e) easy to administer, and f) can be completed in a short time.
Results In answering the first research question, the performance of the participating students on the three levels of VLT was taken into account whereas in answering the second research question, the participants were divided into high and low proficient groups based on whether they passed the cut-off score for the most frequent 2,000 words in VLT.