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There have always been too many words in a new language to learn. Therefore, prioritizing important words over the others for learning, i.e., setting vocabulary-learning goals, is of paramount importance. One of the most effective means of prioritizing specific vocabulary items over other words to learn, is the expansion of a technical word list of the most common ones. This research aimed at reporting a corpus-based lexical study of the most frequently-used words within 8 sub-branches of sociology research articles. A technical word list for research articles in Sociology (STWL) was developed based on a corpus of 3,552,900 running words of 508 research articles in 8 subfields of the academic discipline of Sociology, which were compiled from reputable scholarly journals and analyzed via Range. Results indicated that with 1910 words STWL could cover 87.4% of the words running in the Sociology Technical Corpus (STC), while, based on the analysis, GSL-AWL had only 84.19% coverage over the same corpus. Therefore, STWL can be utilized as a vocabulary source for sociology learners and researchers to better understand the concepts of this field, as well as for ESP instructors and syllabus designers who are not familiar with the specialized terms and words of this field.

Indicators of financial performance, especially financial ratio analysis, have become important financial decision-support information used by firm management and other stakeholders to assess financial stability and growth potential. However, additional information may be hidden in management communication. The article deals with the analysis of the annual reports of U.S. firms from both points of view, a financial one based on a set of financial ratios, and a linguistic one based on the analysis of other information presented by firms in their annual reports. Spearman correlation coefficient is used to compare the values of financial and linguistic indicators. For the purpose of the comprehensive assessment, novel word lists are proposed, specifically designed for each category of financial analysis. The aim is to assess the information ability of annual reports and whether successful firms present their results precisely or not. The results show that the proposed topic dictionaries can be beneficial, especially for the assessment of cash flow and leverage ratios.

Some poor readers show little or no progress in literacy interventions as their susceptibility to the concreteness and neighborhood effect is not accounted for during intervention. This study aims to develop a resource for poor readers by revising the Dolch list to account for the concreteness and neighborhood (orthographic, phonological and semantic) effect. Psycholinguistic techniques were employed to recategorize 220 Dolch list words according to concreteness via function and content word categories, and include the associated orthographic, phonological and semantic neighbors of each word into a new High Frequency List with Neighbors (HFLN). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Bonferroni post hoc test and Levene’s test of variance homogeneity were carried out as measures of statistical significance and variability. The HFLN contains a total of 220 words with 1057 neighbors across five function and content word categories. Both measures of statistical significance and variability show that grade categories in the Dolch list contain greater mean concreteness values with overlapping similarities and higher variability. Conversely, the HFLN effectively delineates concreteness value clusters between categories with lower variability. The HFLN aids in targeted intervention of poor readers by presenting the available orthographic, phonological and semantic neighbors according to the descending order of concreteness.

Considering the number of class hours and the variety of learning materials provided in an EAP course at a university, the frequently estimated number of words that EFL students must master to function in English appears excessive. Recently, though, vocabulary list learning has evolved as an alternate approach to addressing such concerns. The current research investigated the strategic vocabulary learning that EFL students developed during word list learning. A list of 500 A1-A2 academic words divided into 10 sets was compiled and incorporated into a 10-week EAP English vocabulary course. The vocabulary acquisition of students was evaluated using weekly vocabulary tests (consisting of the words learned each week) and a final vocabulary exam (involving all the words in the 10 vocabulary sets). At the completion of the learning, quantitative and qualitative surveys were administered. The results of a mixed-method analysis revealed 1) memory, selective attention, learning words through use, and dictionaries as the most frequently used strategies; 2) shared learning strategies between male and female students, except for taking notes and visual repetition strategies; and 3) the efficacy of the infrequently used strategies in EFL students' vocabulary acquisition. The findings of the study call for the incorporation of explicit VLS instructions and training into students' word list learning, as well as the evaluation of how long words acquired by students will remain in their memories; continuous monitoring and evaluation; and teachers' continuous technical and emotional support during word list learning.

The effect of item-based directed forgetting (DF) on recognition memory for categorized word lists was examined. For half of the categories, all studied exemplars were followed by a remember cue; for the other half of the categories, all studied exemplars were followed by a forget cue. In Experiment 1, a 2-alternative forced-choice recognition test showed decreased recognition for to-be-forgotten items. This effect was seen both when the distractor was from the same category as the target requiring discrimination be based on memory for the specific studied exemplars (exemplar test condition) and when the distractor was from a novel category and discrimination could be based on memory for the studied categories (category test condition). In Experiment 2, a yes-no recognition test showed a DF effect not only in higher hit rates for remember-cued targets compared to forget-cued targets, but also in higher false alarm rates for new exemplars from remember-cued compared to forget-cued categories. The effects of intentional forgetting of categorized word lists are seen not only for the studied exemplars but also for the studied categories and the unstudied typical exemplars of these categories. These results pose a theoretical challenge for the attentional inhibition account of DF. L'effet de l'oubli dirigé (DF) sur la base d'items sur la mémoire de reconnaissance pour les listes de mots classés par catégorie a été examiné. Pour la moitié des catégories, tous les exemples étudiés ont été suivis d'un signal de rappel; pour l'autre moitié des catégories, tous les exemples étudiés ont été suivis d'un signal d'oubli. Dans l'expérience 1, un test de reconnaissance à choix forcé entre deux options a démontré une reconnaissance moindre pour les items à oublier. Cet effet a été observé à la fois quand le distracteur appartenait à la même catégorie que la cible nécessitant que la discrimination soit basée sur le souvenir des exemples étudiés (condition de test exemple) et quand le distracteur appartenait à une nouvelle catégorie et que la discrimination pouvait être basée sur le souvenir des catégories étudiées (condition de test de catégorie). Dans l'expérience 2, un test de reconnaissance oui-non a montré un effet d'oubli dirigé non seulement avec des taux de réussite plus élevés pour les cibles avec signal de rappel par rapport aux cibles avec signal d'oubli, mais également avec des taux de fausse alarme plus élevés pour les nouveaux exemples de catégories avec signal de rappel par rapport aux catégories avec signal d'oubli. Les effets de l'oubli intentionnel de listes de mots classés par catégorie se manifestent non seulement pour les exemples étudiés, mais également pour les catégories étudiées et les exemples typiques non étudiés de ces catégories. Ces résultats mettent en quelque sorte au défi le concept d'inhibition de l'attention responsable de l'oubli dirigé. Public Significance Statement The results of this study show that instructions to intentionally remember or intentionally forget words from semantic categories (e.g., carrot, asparagus, broccoli) influence not only memory for the specific words seen on the study list but also memory for information about the studied categories more generally. Following forget instructions, participants showed a reduced ability to remember both studied items (e.g., carrot) and studied categories (e.g., vegetables) but were also less likely to falsely believe that they remembered seeing a new exemplar from a studied category (e.g., spinach).

Finding the right word that is neither too difficult nor too simple for English learners is one of the most serious problems in applied linguistics, given the undeniable association of vocabulary with comprehension, problems about which academic words need to be used in open and distance learning coursebooks for students' effective reading comprehension remain unsolved. This study serves this purpose by conducting data-driven research on the coursebooks of the National Open University of Nigeria. Therefore, this study uses Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) in a corpus of 6,802,300 words from first-year university coursebooks. The results indicate that while the AWL contains 9.47% of the lexical items in the corpus, certain items on the list frequently occur and exhibit distinct behaviours across disciplinary fields. Using frequency and range selection criteria, the study finds 181 AWL and 28 non-AWL word items used at least 1132 times in the NOUNC and at least 15 times across the 30 academic subjects. This study uncovers cross-disciplinary lexical features that can be used to develop vocabulary acquisition and help students participating in open and distance learning courses improve their academic reading and other language skills. In light of the above, the AWLNOUN could serve as a reference resource for educators and course designers in curriculum development for open and distance learning centres.

With vocabulary playing an essential role in the learning of English for Specific Purposes, teachers face the challenge of organising and teaching lexis in a way that maximises opportunities for acquisition. Specialised word lists offer a solution, but a major obstacle is how to integrate these lists into learning materials containing items used in actual discourse. In this paper, we report on research involving the creation of a medical English word list (MEWL), integrated into a set of specially designed materials for students at a national university in Japan. These materials, developed through needs analysis at the university’s medical school, are primarily organised around body systems, with an additional focus on doctor–patient communication. The MEWL is complemented by a list of word parts, aiming to sensitise students to complex medical terms. We describe the delivery of the list, first through the courses and materials, and then via the development of a vocabulary learning tool, Hi-Lex, which analyses texts against any word lists it contains. Hi-Lex allows learners to create personalised word lists and understand word usage in context. The findings of a small trial study of Hi-Lex (N = 31) illustrate how the software provides insight into students’ selections of words in specialised texts.

The article presents a lexical study that investigates the lexical demands of academic written texts at different levels of writing. By employing the British National Corpus/ Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) word list and the Academic Word List (AWL), the present study analyzed data from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, which contained 2,761 student assignments, and the Public Library of Science One (PLOS ONE) corpus which included 4,000 scholarly articles. Results from the analyses demonstrated significant differences in lexical difficulty between students’ assignments and scholarly publications. The proportion of academic vocabulary in written texts was also found to increase as the writers’ levels went up. Cross-discipline comparisons highlighted the difference in lexical difficulties between scientific disciplines. Plain Language Summary Lexical demands of Academic Written English The present study was designed to find an answer to the question concerning the number of words needed to understand academic writing. Two corpora of students’ assignments and research articles which contained papers from a range of disciplines were analyzed. The results from the analyses showed the number of words needed to gain acceptable and optimal comprehension of academic written texts for different scientific disciplines and levels of writing. The findings also provided evidence for the differences in lexical difficulty between academic texts at various levels and of different disciplines.

Recall of recently heard words is affected by the clarity of presentation: Even if all words are presented with sufficient clarity for successful recognition, those that are more difficult to hear are less likely to be recalled. Such a result demonstrates that memory processing depends on more than whether a word is simply “recognized” versus “not recognized.” More surprising is that, when a single item in a list of spoken words is acoustically masked, prior words that were heard with full clarity are also less likely to be recalled. To account for such a phenomenon, we developed the linking-by-active-maintenance model (LAMM). This computational model of perception and encoding predicts that these effects will be time dependent. Here we challenged our model by investigating whether and how the impact of acoustic masking on memory depends on presentation rate. We found that a slower presentation rate causes a more disruptive impact of stimulus degradation on prior, clearly heard words than does a fast rate. These results are unexpected according to prior theories of effortful listening, but we demonstrated that they can be accounted for by LAMM.