Lexical behaviour in academic and technical corpora: Implications for ESP development

Abstract

Lexical approaches to Academic and Technical English have been well documented by scholars from as early as Cowie (1978). More recent work demonstrates how computer technology can assist in the effective analysis of corpus-based data (Cowie, 1998; Pedersen, 1995; Scott, 2000). For teaching purposes, this recent research has shown that the distinction between common coreness and diversity is a crucial issue. This paper outlines a way of dealing with vocabulary in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction in the light of insights provided by empirical observation. Focusing mainly on collocation in the context of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and, more precisely, within English for Information Science and Technology, we show how the results of the contrastive study of lexical items in small specific corpora can become the basis for teaching / learning ESP at the tertiary level. In the process of this study, an account is given of the functions of academic and technical lexis, aspects of keywords and word frequency are defined, and the value of corpus-derived collocation information is demonstrated for the specific textual environment.