English vocabulary presents particular difficulties for learners of English:

• It originates from two very different sources providing us with two rather distinct vocabularies (Anglo-Saxon and Graeco-Latin);
• It has become institutionalised with formal education in Greek and Latin stemming from the Middle Ages;
• It has been maintained in the English speaking culture developed in Britain by an exclusive culture of literacy which later spread to the colonies of the New World;
• It is used to represent specific meaning systems encountered with education and not necessarily outside and therefore frequently excluded those with no access to higher levels of education;
• Knowledge of the GL vocabulary is culturally bound and unevenly distributed in the population;
• Use of this vocabulary has the power to 'position' people socioculturally;
• It is used to distinguish people in terms of educational potential which raises questions of inclusivity;
• It is learned relatively late by native speakers (upper primary – tertiary);
• It is particularly difficult for ESL learners and creates a 'lexical bar'.

Overheads (from Corson 1997, see readings below):

In English there are two vocabularies: one to talk about everyday things, and one to talk about thoughts and theories. For example compare, the following Old English words used frequently when speaking:

• believe, know, mean, say, tell, think, understand

with the Latinate words used more often in academic spoken and written discourse:

• assert, assume, claim, concede, conclude, confirm, contradict, criticize, declare, define, deny, discover, doubt, explain, hypothesize, imply, infer, interpret, observe, predict, prove, remember, suggest.

and notice how many of these words describe 'mental' acts, those involved with 'thinking'. The first set are used when talking about what a person says and what he means by it, the second set is used not only for talking about what someone has said but also for talking about what someone has written, ie, for interpreting written texts. These are often called 'reporting' words or 'speech act' words.

Many of the words from Greco-Latin sources, which are less common in everyday contexts, are called 'academic core' vocabulary, that is they may be used in all or most disciplines with the same meanings. The examples we looked at last session were: assumption, suggestion, claim, implication, prediction, epitome, anecdotal, hypothesis, etc.

There are also a large number of idiomatic phrases and expressions to be found in academic writing generally. The following may occur within any discipline:

• recent research has focused on...,
• increasing demands are placed on...,
• the contribution X has made to the field of...,
• X's hypothesis is based on the premise...,
• this definition implies that Y is concerned with...,
• from the foregoing discussion it appears that..., etc.

In addition to these, are words for particular theories and phenomena within a discipline of study. In social sciences, for example, there is Structuralism, Rationalism, Post modernism, Marxism, Chaos Theory, Functionalism, Interactionist Theory, Conflict Theory, Behaviourism, Empiricism, Positivism and many more. These ideas are associated with particular schools of thought and expressed as differing perspectives or hidden agenda. You will notice that many of the words used in academic study, or more particularly in the study of theories and ideas are abstract words. They do not describe cars and cups and trees, but theoretical approaches, criticisms, perspectives, findings, research, all of which are abstract concepts.

Each discipline also has its own terminology, specialist terms for things found in that field of study. Examples include terminology for species ( e.g. Nodilittorina nodosa – a kind of periwinkle) in Zoology, diseases ( e.g. Schistosomiasis – a kind of disease) in medicine and epidemiology, tests and instruments from science, engineering, mathematics and statistics ( e.g. Shannon-Weiner indices, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium tests), terms and acronyms used in computer sciences ( e.g. UPS – uninterruptable power supply, HTML – Hypertext markup language), terms in taxation law, accounting, finance and commerce ( e.g. identifiable intangible assets).

Discipline specific vocabulary also includes processes which are not always shared across disciplines, e.g. dissection, enucleation, electrophoresis in science and medicine, and redeeming in accounting. There are also discipline specific collocations and phrases not encountered in other fields of study, e.g. asset recognition in accounting, allele frequencies in zoology, and participant observation in the social sciences.

More words that go together frequently (collocations):

General versus specific vocabulary

GL vocabulary not only provides use with the content words of our learning areas but also the vocabulary to link these content words. Thus:

• the set assert, assume, claim, concede ... might be used across learning areas (= general academic vocabulary),
• while ecosystem, herbivores, preCambrian belong to specific content areas (=discipline specific vocabulary).

However sometimes general academic words are used in discipline specific contexts, eg.
“The broadest varieties form a continuum with creoles which are still in use in and between Aboriginal communities.” (Malcolm 1994:151)

• Varieties – varieties of language (dialects, creoles etc)
• Broadest varieties – the most non-standard varieties
• Continuum – a creole continuum

In which case a student might justifiably claim that he/she “knows the words but can't understand the meaning”

Collocation or Phraseology 'the company that words keep'

eg,

blond goes with hair (not yellow)
flock goes with sheep (not herd)

Some are quite fixed, eg spick and span, cup and saucer.

Others are created in different learning areas and become part of that vocabulary, being used again and again in these combinations:

Others are used across a range of learning areas:

Some suggested readings