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The Importance Of Vocabulary
The Importance Of Vocabulary
'The process of learning through English for academic purposes involves two goals: 1) gaining English proficiency to a high level of near-native fluency and 2) the ability to carry out complex, higher-order thinking processes in English. Success with these goals ultimately comes down to vocabulary.'
Source: Schofield, Alison and McGeary, Francesca. Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside Out. 2016.
Below are a series of resources to help you develop your vocabulary. Each unit of the course will have a vocabulary list. In addition, there are resources to help you self-study and develop your academic vocabulary.
Vocabulary for Mental Health Unit
Unit One Vocabulary List
Week 1: General:
mental (health)
depression
anxiety
psychologist
stress triggers
From reading task:
memoir
extended metaphor
quixotic
Idioms:
a few sandwiches short of a picnic, not all there, not playing with a full deck (exploration of values hidden within idioms), there is light at the end of the tunnel, every cloud has a silver lining
Week 2: From listening task:
geneticists
susceptibility
analogy
(an) episode (of illness)
vulnerability
protective factors
strategies
Week 3: From the writing task (rubric analysis):
nuanced
selectively
logical
coherent
conceptual understanding
register
tone
conventions
context
purpose
audience
Marzano Template
Marzano Template
This resource takes you through the steps to help support vocabulary building.
For more about how this strategy works see here.
Roots
Roots
Another way to develop your vocabulary is to build your understanding of root words. These roots are the base of the word's meaning. The meaning is changed when prefixes and suffixes are added.
Academic Word List
Academic Word List
'The Academic Word List (AWL), developed by Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, contains 570 word families which frequently appear in academic texts, but which are not contained in the General Service List (GSL). Research has shown that the AWL covers 10% of words in academic texts; if you are familiar with words in the GSL (which covers around 80% of words in texts), you would have knowledge of approximately 90% of words in academic texts. '
Source: 'The Academic Word List (AWL)', EAP Foundation, https://www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/academic/awllists/. Accessed 26 August 2021.
The Academic Collocation List
The Academic Collocation List
Collocations are two or more words that are frequently used together. For example, the noun 'married' is often collocated with the adjective 'happily'. We do not typically collocate 'merrily' or 'joyfully' with the noun 'married', even though these are synonyms. Similarly, we use the adjective 'blonde' with the noun 'hair', not 'yellow' or 'beige'. Knowing frequent collocations will help you sound more fluent and natural.
This link is to a list of academic collocations. It is a list containing over 2,000 of the most frequent collocations found in written academic English. This pairs well with the Academic Word List above.
IELTS Vocab support
IELTS Vocab support
The EAP Foundation also supports IELTS vocabulary development and has made a collection of useful videos. These great resources include the vocabulary and common collocations for some of the common IELTS topics. Even if you are not taking the IELTS exams, they are useful. The website also includes some exercises to practice your vocabulary. Click here and it will take you to the page on the topic of crime.
Instagram
Instagram
You can follow contributors on Instagram to develop your vocabulary. Here are some suggestions. Some are academic, and some are a little more humorous.
Posts interesting words each day with meanings and examples
Susie Dent is a lexicographer. Her posts are of more obsure words. Thunderplump, anyone?
Interesting, weird, unusual and irreverent posts about language.
Definitions and examples of phrasal verbs.
The Academic Concordancer
The Academic Concordancer
When learning a new academic word, it is sometimes tricky to figure out how it works in a sentence. This incredibly useful site helps. The Academic Concordancer.
Step 1: Type in the word that is new to you from your studies. This is an academic concordancer and so words will be linked to the world of academia! I have selected the word 'metaphor'.
Step 2: After you click 'SUBMIT", you will see a list of concordance lines. This shows how the words is used in part of a sentence. Use this to look at examples of how the word is used and with which words it typically collocates.
Step 3: Then scroll down to look at the word associations. For example, the word metaphor, according to the concordancer, is typically followed by the word 'for' or preceded by 'of'.
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