The teaching of academic words: are they given due attention or neglected?

Abstract

Besides English for General Purposes (EGP) words} secondary school students must also learn the 570 apparently easily neglected but difficult academic words that appear frequently in academic texts. At tertiary institutions} academic words called Academic Word List (Coxhead} 2011) are essential because students have to read complex} specialised academic texts. Preliminary investigation carried out on the Malaysian English language secondary school syllabus documents to check on the availability of these words suggests a depressing picture of AWL instruction. Out of 1}316 words listed in the syllabus booklefs word lists} only seven are academic words. But since the syllabus booklet is merely a 'map} to the entire curriculum} there was thus a need to investigate a more reliable} valid vocabulary learning resource - the Malaysian secondary school English language textbooks. This research was thus carried out} firstly} to see whether academic words were inserted into the textbooks used during the five years. To investigate this, the researchers scanned currently in use English textbooks from secondary one to five} and then run all the textbooks' pages into Range (Nation} 2005L a' programme which separates common words (General Service Word List - GSL) and low frequency words from academic words. Out of the 570 academic words} 480 of them were found in the textbooks} but another 90 were not found. The second aim of the research is to see whether these words are defined by the textbook writers. The researchers will be using the concordance feature of the Wordsmith programme for this.