Developing an English Zoology Academic Word List: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This study aimed to (1) generate a list of common vocabulary used in zoology research articles and (2) validate the word lists with zoology experts. The Zoology Research Articles Corpus (ZRAC) was compiled from 268 zoology research articles published between January 2016 and February 2019 from the International Journal of Zoology by the Zoological Society of London. AntWordProfiler (v1.4.0) (Anthony, 2013) software was used to analyse the frequency of the 1,530,384 words comprising the ZRAC. The software identified 504 frequently used words generally related to zoology. Seven university zoology lecturers were asked to clarify the specification of the words in the field of zoology. This validation process resulted in the removal of 218 words (43.25%), as they were not specifically related to the field of zoology. The list was then categorized into word families. The word list was generated using Coxhead's range and word frequency criteria, and called the Zoology Academic Word Lists (ZAWL). The ZAWL aims to assist undergraduate and graduate students in their preparation for the reading and writing of research papers in zoology. Additionally, ZAWL can be applied in vocabulary pedagogy for lecturers in selecting appropriate vocabulary to teach undergraduate and graduate classes.