Lexical Features of Engineering English vs. General English

Noorli Khamis, Imran Ho-Abdullah

Abstract


The knowledge on the features of the English varieties is essential to understand the differences and similarities of the varieties for second language teaching and learning, either for general proficiency (EGP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. This paper demonstrates a corpus-based comparison of the lexical features between an ESP variety (Engineering English) and a General English (GE). Two corpora are used in the study; the Engineering English Corpus (EEC) acts as the representation of the specialized language, and the British National Corpus (BNC) as the General English (GE). The analyses are conducted by employing the WordList functions of a linguistic software – Wordsmith. Discussions on the differences (or similarities) of these two corpora include general statistics, text coverage and vocabulary size. The empirical findings in this study highlight the general lexical features of both corpora. The analyses verify that the Engineering English has less varied vocabulary, but higher text coverage than the GE; in other words, most of the words are used repeatedly throughout the EEC. Thus, this study further emphasizes the importance of corpus-based lexical investigations in providing empirical evidences for language description.

 


Keywords


corpus; lexical features; specialized corpus; language description; ESP

Full Text:

PDF

References


Biber, D. (2006). University Language: A Corpus-Based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Bowker, L. & Pearson, J. (2002). Working with Specialised Language: A Practical Guide to Using Corpora. London: Routledge.

Chujo, K. & Utiyama, M. (2005). Understanding the Role of Text Length, Sample Size and Vocabulary Size in Determining Text Coverage. Reading in a Foreign Language. Vol. 17(1), 1-22.

Gavioli, L. (2005). Exploring Corpora for ESP Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Hsueh-chao, M. H. & P. Nation. (2000). Unknown Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language. Vol. 13(1), 403-430.

Hunston, S. (2000). Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Laufer, B. & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, G. C. (2010). Lexical Threshold Revisited: Lexical Text Coverage, Learners’ Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language. Vol. 22(1), 15-30.

Retrieved December 27, 2016 from

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ887873.pdf

McEnery, T. & Wilson, A. (2001). Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Meyer, C. F. (2002). English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP.

Na, L. & Nation, P. (1985). Factors Affecting Guessing Vocabulary in Context. RELC Journal. Vol. 16, 33-42.

Nation, P. & Kyongho, H. (1995). Where Would General Service Vocabulary Stop and Special Purposes Vocabulary Begin?. System. Vol. 23(1), 35-41.

Nishina, Y. (2007). A Corpus-Driven Approach to Genre Analysis: The Reinvestigation of Academic, Newspaper and Literary Texts. Empirical Language Research (ELR) Journal. Vol. 2(1). Retrieved July 31, 2010 from http://ejournals.org.uk/ELR/article/2007/2

Noorli Khamis & Imran Ho-Abdullah. (2015). Exploring Word Associations in Academic Engineering Texts. 3L: Language Linguistics Literature®, Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. Vol. 21(1), 117-131.

Partington, A. (1998). Patterns and Meanings: Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Peters, P. & Fernández, T. (2013). The Lexical Needs of ESP Students in a Professional Field. English for Specific Purposes. Vol. 32, 236-247. Retrieved June 31, 2016 from http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0889490613000355/1-s2.0-S0889490613000355-main.pdf?_ti d=9b1403fe-0add-11e7-b0de-00000aab0f01&acdnat=1489733436_94408bc049d9ad1 699ca7d9fee 376024

Sadeghi, K. & Nobakht, A. (2014). The Effect of Linguistic Context on EFL Vocabulary Learning. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies. Vol. 14(3), 65-82.

Sardinha, B. (1996). Review: Wordsmith Tools. Computers & Texts 12. Retrieved July 25, 2011 from http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/publish/comtxt/ct12/sardinha.html

Schmitt, N. &, Schmitt, D. (2014). A Reassessment of Frequency and Vocabulary Size in L2 Vocabulary Teaching1. Language Teaching. Vol. 47(4), 484–503. Retrieved November 17, 2016 from https://doi. org/10.1017/S0261444812000018

Scott, M. & Tribble, C. (2006). Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Scott, M. (2006). Oxford Wordsmith Tools Version 4.0 Manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Şen, Y. & Kuleli, M. (2015). The Effect of Vocabulary Size and Vocabulary Depth on Reading in EFL Context. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 199, 555-562. Retrieved May 7, 2016 from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.546

Someya, Y. (1999). A corpus-based study of lexical and grammatical features of written business English. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Tokyo.

Stubbs, M. (1996). Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Teng, F. (2016). The Effects of Word Exposure Frequency on Incidental Learning of the Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies. Vol. 16(3), 53-70.

Thouvenin, S. P. (1996). The identification and exemplification of multi-word units within a technical corpus of English, including an investigation of nominal groups. Unpublished M.Sc. thesis, Aston University.

Tribble, C. (1997). Improvising corpora for ELT: Quick and dirty ways of developing corpora for language teaching. Proceedings of PALC, Retrieved October 2, 2008 from http://www.ctribble. co.uk/text/Palc.htm

Triki, M. (2002). Pragmatics for ESP Purposes. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies. Vol. 2(1). Retrieved March 11, 2016 from http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/article/view/218

Waring, R. & Nation, I. S. P. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage, and word lists. In Schmitt, N. & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 6-19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilkinson, M. (2014). Using the Keyword Tool to Explore Lexical Differences between British and American English in Specialised Corpora. CALL-EJ. Vol. 15(1), 53-70. Retrieved March 11, 2016 from http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84894852909&partnerID=tZOtx3y1




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/gema-2017-1703-07

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021