IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/jcallt/v3y2013i4p33-47.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Application of Corpus Tools in the Teaching of Discipline-Specific Academic Vocabulary: A Case Study for Information Engineering Undergraduates

Author

Listed:
  • Min Zhang

    (Faculty of Foreign Studies, Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China)

Abstract

This article concerns a corpus-based lexical study that is aimed at teaching academic vocabulary to address the specific needs of Chinese undergraduates majoring in information engineering. A 1,024,882-word corpus of Information Engineering English Corpus (IEEC) was built on the basis of university-level textbook materials drawn from ten compulsory courses for information engineering students. A quantitative analysis was carried out to seek for an optimal frequency threshold for extracting frequently occurring academic vocabulary specific to the discipline of information engineering based on Coxhead’s Academic Word List (2000). An innovative 2-dimensional categorization of AWL for EAP students was adopted in the study. As a result, a 100-word highly frequent core AWL and a 147-word frequent AWL were compiled for IEEC under two parameters of lexical frequency and specificity to individual sub-corpora. The present study further explored the application of corpus tools to highlight and effectively teach the discipline-specific academic vocabulary and collocations to promote learners’ autonomy and enhance their lexical competence in the study of specialized courses.

Suggested Citation

  • Min Zhang, 2013. "The Application of Corpus Tools in the Teaching of Discipline-Specific Academic Vocabulary: A Case Study for Information Engineering Undergraduates," International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), IGI Global, vol. 3(4), pages 33-47, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:jcallt:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:33-47
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/ijcallt.2013100104
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:jcallt:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:33-47. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.