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- Title
Vocabulary Complexity in EFL University Students’ Academic Texts.
- Authors
Charpentier-Jiménez, William
- Abstract
This paper examines students’ use of vocabulary in English as a foreign language (EFL) in academic writing. However necessary, the specific vocabulary used by students in academic EFL settings has not received sufficient attention. Thirty-one EFL students at a Costa Rican public university participated in this study, which was conducted over the course of a year. The researcher collected data from participants’ final research papers and used specialized software to determine their vocabulary usage. Data analyses indicate that: 1) lexical variety is above average, 2) students’ academic vocabulary is high but does not include all the possible subtypes, 3) students range between a C1 and C2 English level in the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP) distribution, and 4) metadiscourse markers are used but highly repetitive in students’ papers. These conclusions are consistent with the reviewed literature; they imply a high degree of variation across populations. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that direct instruction may broaden students’ lexicon. These findings should serve as a springboard for implementing new teaching strategies that stimulate a curricular evaluation of the study plan.
- Subjects
VOCABULARY; ENGLISH as a foreign language; ACADEMIC discourse; STUDENTS; HIGHER education
- Publication
Revista de Lenguas Modernas, 2023, Issue 37, p1
- ISSN
1659-1933
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.15517/RLM.V0I37.50826