Establishment of A Medical Academic Word List: English For Specific Purposes December 2008
Establishment of A Medical Academic Word List: English For Specific Purposes December 2008
Establishment of A Medical Academic Word List: English For Specific Purposes December 2008
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Abstract
This paper reports a corpus-based lexical study of the most frequently used medical academic
vocabulary in medical research articles (RAs). A Medical Academic Word List (MAWL), a word
list of the most frequently used medical academic words in medical RAs, was compiled from a cor-
pus containing 1 093 011 running words of medical RAs from online resources. The established
MAWL contains 623 word families, which accounts for 12.24% of the tokens in the medical RAs
under study. The high word frequency and the wide text coverage of medical academic vocabulary
throughout medical RAs confirm that medical academic vocabulary plays an important role in med-
ical RAs. The MAWL established in this study may serve as a guide for instructors in curriculum
preparation, especially in designing course-books of medical academic vocabulary, and for medical
English learners in setting their vocabulary learning goals of reasonable size during a particular
phase of English language learning.
Ó 2008 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
q
The article is co-authored equally.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 8477 4475; fax: +86 29 8323 4516.
E-mail address: guangcge@fmmu.edu.cn (G.-c. Ge).
0889-4906/$34.00 Ó 2008 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.esp.2008.05.003
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 443
beyond the reaches of second language learners and even beyond the reaches of most
native speakers.
Fortunately, all words are not equally important in different stages of learning. Nation’s
(2001) division of vocabulary into four levels — high frequency words, academic vocabu-
lary, technical vocabulary and low frequency words — indicates that some words deserve
more attention and effort than others in different phases of language learning or for differ-
ent purposes. According to Nation and Waring (1997), it is generally agreed that the
beginners of English learning should focus on the first 2000 most frequently occurring
word families of English in the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953), while for inter-
mediate or advanced learners who usually study English for academic purposes, the com-
mand of these GSL words may no longer be their major concern and the priority of their
vocabulary acquisition may be shifted to lower frequency vocabulary. In academic set-
tings, ESP students do not see these technical terms as a problem because these terms
are usually the focus of the discussion in the classroom or are glossed in the textbook
(Strevens, 1973). The vocabulary that ESP students have most difficulty with is known,
in ESP jargon, as non-subject-specific semi-technical vocabulary or academic vocabulary
(Li & Pemberton, 1994; Shaw, 1991; Thurstun & Candlin, 1998).
subject teachers that their students knew these words and as a result they seldom taught
these words explicitly.
Previous studies on academic vocabulary have produced some very helpful academic
word lists. Quite a number of these academic word lists focused on the academic vocabulary
occurring across different disciplines. By analyzing 301 800 words in textbooks and lectures
published in journals covering 19 academic disciplines, Campion and Elley (1971) devel-
oped a word list containing 500 most common words and 3200 frequently used words.
The items in their list represented the vocabulary that students were likely to encounter
in their university studies. Praninskas (1972) compiled the American University Word list,
which was based on a corpus of 272 466 words from 10 university-level textbooks covering
10 academic disciplines. Lynn’s (1973) and Ghadessy’s (1979) word lists were drawn up by
counting the words for which foreign students wrote annotations in their university text-
books and the words that the students had found difficult during their reading. Xue and
Nation (1984) combined the four earlier-compiled word lists (Campion and Elley’s, Pra-
ninskas’s, Lynn’s, and Ghadessy’s) into the University Word List (UWL), consisting of
about 800 words that were not in the first 2000 words of the GSL but that were of high fre-
quency and of wide range in academic texts. Xue and Nation’s purpose of setting up the
UWL was to create a list of high frequency words for learners with academic purposes,
so that these words can be taught and directly studied in the same way as the words from
the GSL. More recently, Coxhead (2000) developed the Academic Word List (AWL), using
a corpus of 3.5 million running words, plus Range—the software which could calculate how
often a word occurred (its frequency) and in how many different texts in the corpus it
occurred (its range). The texts in her corpus were selected from different academic journals
and university textbooks in four main areas: arts, commerce, law and natural science. The
AWL contains 570 word families that account for approximately 10% of the total words in
her selected academic texts. Compared with the UWL, the AWL contains fewer word fam-
ilies but provides more text coverage and more consistent word selection criteria. AWL now
is a widely cited academic word list across a broad range of disciplines.
In addition to these discipline-crossing academic word lists, some researchers have
focused on the academic vocabulary used in a single discipline. They assumed that there
might be some unique features in the academic vocabulary across sub-disciplines of one
discipline. Lam (2001) conducted an empirical study of academic vocabulary of Computer
Science in order to find the vocabulary problems encountered by the computer science stu-
dents in reading academic texts. She noted that academic vocabulary was semantically dis-
tinct from the same vocabulary when it appeared in general texts. She suggested that such
lexical terms should be presented as a glossary of academic vocabulary with information
of frequency of occurrences based on a specialized corpus. Mudraya (2006) established the
Student Engineering English Corpus (SEEC), containing nearly 2 000 000 running words
selected from engineering textbooks in 13 engineering disciplines and produced an aca-
demic word list of 1200 word families for engineering students. The word families in
her word list are frequently encountered in engineering textbooks compulsory for all engi-
neering students, regardless of their fields of specialization. She argued that academic
vocabulary should be given more attention in the ESP classroom.
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 445
Despite the academic vocabulary lists across different disciplines compiled respectively
by some researchers, there were few detailed studies exclusively on medical academic
vocabulary used in the field of medicine. Baker (1988) analyzed three rhetorical items in
medical journal articles and she concluded that rhetorical items were in the category of
academic vocabulary and that identifying academic items had some pedagogical implica-
tions. Chen and Ge (2007) analyzed the occurrence and distribution of the AWL word
families in medical RAs. Their findings confirmed that the academic vocabulary had a
high text coverage and dispersion throughout a medical research article and served some
important rhetorical functions, but they argued that the AWL was far from complete in
representing the frequently used medical academic vocabulary in medical RAs and called
for efforts in establishing a medical academic word list.
The study reported in this paper was designed to develop a Medical Academic Word
List (MAWL) of the most frequently used medical academic vocabulary across different
sub-disciplines in medical science. We hope the MAWL established in this study may serve
as a guide for medical English instructors in curriculum preparation, especially in design-
ing course-books of medical academic vocabulary, and for medical English learners in set-
ting their vocabulary learning goals of reasonable size during a particular phase of English
language learning.
2. Methodology
We established as the database for our study a written specialized corpus containing
1 093 011 running words from 288 written texts of a single genre—medical research arti-
cles, because reading and writing medical RAs is the fundamental concern for most learn-
ers/users of English for Medical Purposes (EMP).
All the sample medical RAs included in the corpus were kept at their original length,
written in the internationally conventionalized IMRD (Introduction–Method–Result–Dis-
cussion) structure, published in the years 2000–2006 and written by native English speak-
ing writers by Wood’s (2001) ‘‘strict” criteria (first authors had to have names native to the
country concerned and also be affiliated with an institution in countries where this lan-
guage is spoken as the first language).
A three-round selection was conducted in choosing the sample medical RAs for the cor-
pus. In the first round, we took each of the 32 subject areas as one stratum and then by
stratified random sampling we selected 3 journals from each of the 32 subject areas/stra-
tum, totaling 96 journals. In the second round, we randomly selected one issue out of each
of the 96 journals obtained in the first round. From the 96 selected issues, the articles
which were not following the IMRD format, were not written by native English speaking
writers or were shorter than 2000 running words or longer than 12 000, running words
were eliminated. In the third round, we selected 3 criteria-fulfilling articles from each of
the 96 issues by simple random sampling. After this three-round selection, 288 texts were
chosen for the corpus, the shortest one containing 2923 running words and the longest one
containing 10 901 running words (4939 on average).
normalization of words was fulfilled automatically by the computer software. The com-
puter software would read all inflections or derivations of a word as its basic form and
would count the range and frequency of them as one word family. For example, induce,
induced, induces, inducing and induction would be counted as one word by the computer
software. Word family, as defined by Bauer and Nation (1993), is the base word plus its
inflected forms and transparent derivations, including all closely related affixed forms as
well as the stem’s most frequent, productive and regular prefixes, suffixes and perceived
transparency. According to Coxhead (2000, p. 218), ‘‘comprehending regularly inflected
or derived members of a family does not require much more effort by learners if they know
the base word and if they have control of basic word-building processes”, which may
account for the general adoption of the word family in many word lists. After the stan-
dardization of the sample texts and normalization of words, the words in the corpus were
counted and sorted automatically by computer.
1. Specialized occurrence: The word families included had to be outside the first 2000 most
frequently occurring words of English, as represented by West’s GSL (1953).
2. Range: Members of a word family had to occur at least in 16 or more of the 32 subject
areas.
3. Frequency: Members of a word family had to occur at least 30 times in the corpus of
medical research articles.
was needed in the inclusion or the elimination of some criteria-fulfilling controversial word
families in or from the computer-screened-out candidate list.
3. Results
There were 1 093 011 running words, 31 275 word families and 4128 pages of text in the
corpus. Totally 3345 word families were found to have occurred P30 times (frequency).
After the elimination of the GSL word families (1899 word families), 1446 word families
were left and 650 (44.95%) word families of them occurred in 16 or more subject areas
under study (range). By consulting the two experienced professors of English for Medical
Purposes, 27 (4.15%) borderline word families out of the 650 word families in the com-
puter-screened candidate list were eliminated by expert opinion. Table 1 displays the 27
word families which were eliminated by expert opinion.
Table 1
Twenty-seven word families eliminated by expert opinion
Number Headword Frequency Range Number Headword Frequency Range
1 pathogenesis 146 22 15 necrosis 55 16
2 cytokine 119 18 16 cutaneous 55 16
3 epithelial 115 17 17 stent 52 16
4 mitochondrial 110 16 18 vivo 52 17
5 carcinoma 80 16 19 hepatic 51 19
6 ligand 79 17 20 aortic 50 18
7 situ 68 16 21 ischemia 50 17
8 lymphoid 68 16 22 cerebral 49 17
9 vitro 65 17 23 dorsal 46 16
10 pulmonary 65 16 24 hemorrhage 44 18
11 posterior 63 18 25 pathophysiology 44 17
12 anterior 63 18 26 exogenous 39 16
13 lysis 60 16 27 phenotypic 33 16
14 cardia 56 18
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 449
By our word selection criteria plus the expert opinion of our consulted experienced
EMP professors, 623 (95.85% of 650) word families were ultimately chosen and formed
the Medical Academic Word List (see Appendix), which appeared 133 746 times totally.
In the MAWL, the most frequently used word was cell, which appeared 4421 times and
appeared in all the 32 subject areas in the corpus, while the least frequently used one
was static, which appeared 30 times and appeared in 20 subject areas in the corpus. Table
2 shows the statistical results of the top 30 most frequently used word families in the
MAWL.
The word families in the MAWL occurred in a wide range of the subject areas in our
corpus. Of the 623 word families in the list, 104 (16.69%) covered all the 32 subject areas
and 321 (51.52%) covered 25 or more subject areas (see Table 3). Totally, 486 word fam-
ilies (78.01%) in the MAWL occurred in 20 or more of the 32 subject areas under study.
Taking the list as a whole, the frequency and the range of the word families included in the
MAWL were positively correlated (rs = 0.753, p = 0.000). Among the top 100 most fre-
quently used word families in the list, 54 (54%) appeared in all the 32 subject areas and
Table 2
Statistical results of the top 30 word families of the MAWL
Headword Frequency Range
Occurrence % Occurrence %
cell 4421 3.31 32 100.00
data 2226 1.66 32 100.00
muscular 2049 1.53 23 71.88
significant 2039 1.52 32 100.00
clinic 1598 1.19 32 100.00
analyze 1447 1.08 32 100.00
respond 1427 1.07 32 100.00
factor 1237 0.92 32 100.00
method 1209 0.90 32 100.00
protein 1122 0.84 28 87.50
tissue 1097 0.82 29 90.63
dose 1035 0.77 26 81.25
gene 999 0.75 28 87.50
previous 926 0.69 32 100.00
demonstrate 861 0.64 32 100.00
normal 819 0.61 32 100.00
process 819 0.61 32 100.00
similar 810 0.61 32 100.00
concentrate 787 0.59 27 84.38
function 756 0.57 32 100.00
therapy 749 0.56 29 90.63
indicate 745 0.56 32 100.00
area 734 0.55 32 100.00
obtain 705 0.53 32 100.00
research 704 0.53 32 100.00
vary 695 0.52 32 100.00
activate 673 0.50 31 96.88
require 669 0.50 32 100.00
induce 668 0.50 30 93.75
cancer 667 0.50 22 68.75
450 J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458
Table 3
Subject-area coverage of word families in MAWL
Subject areas covered Number of word families %
32 104 16.69
31 31 4.98
30 30 4.82
29 37 5.94
28 32 5.14
27 27 4.33
26 29 4.65
25 31 4.98
24 38 6.10
23 22 3.53
22 32 5.13
21 35 5.62
20 38 6.10
19 29 4.65
18 40 6.42
17 35 5.62
16 33 5.30
Total 623 100.00
90 (90%) appeared in 25 or more subject areas, while among the bottom 100 word families
in the list, only 1 (1%) covered 32 subject areas and 42 (42%) covered fewer than 20 subject
areas.
The average text coverage of the MAWL was 12.24% of the total words in the medical
RAs under study. The following passage randomly selected from a medical research article
(Supp & Boyce, 2005) in our corpus gave us a picture of the academic words used in such
texts. The words included in the MAWL are underlined.
Chronic wounds represent a different kind of challenge for wound healing. These
wounds do not usually involve a large surface area, but they have a high incidence
in the general population and thus have enormous medical and economic impacts.
The most common chronic wounds include pressure ulcers and leg ulcers. In the Uni-
ted States alone, these wounds are estimated to affect more than 2 million people
with total clinical treatment costs as high as $1 billion annually. Pressure ulcers,
characterized by tissue ischemia and necrosis, are common among patients in
long-term care settings, but patients hospitalized for short-term care settings are also
at risk if mobility is impaired. Leg ulcers can have a variety of etiologies. Venous
ulcers are the most common, often resulting from dysfunction of valves in veins of
the lower leg that normally prevent the backflow of venous blood. Venous conges-
tion leads to leakage of blood and macromolecules into the dermis, which can act
as physical barriers to diffusion of oxygen and nutrients from the vasculature into
the skin. Arterial insufficiency and diabetes also contribute to the development of
leg ulcers. Arterial blockage can lead to tissue ischemia, inducing ulcers or necrosis.
The patients with diabetes are prone to leg ulcers because of several aspects of their
disease, including neuropathy, poor circulation, and reduced response to infection.
Diabetic foot ulcers can lead to complications that result in as many as 50,000 ampu-
tations annually in the United States, accounting for 45–70% of all lower-extremity
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 451
The MAWL can serve as reference for a Medical English lexical syllabus. As the fre-
quently and widely used medical academic vocabulary in medical RAs, the word families
in the MAWL are worth special attention in designing some English for Medical Purposes
(EMP) courses. The MAWL can provide some guidelines concerning vocabulary in curric-
ulum preparation, particularly in designing EMP course-books for learning medical aca-
demic vocabulary and in selecting relevant teaching/learning materials. The MAWL can
help learners/instructors center on essential medical academic words, providing learners
with some more specific approach to learning medical academic vocabulary and facilitat-
ing instructors’ setting of their medical academic vocabulary teaching goals in different
stages. Well-timed and repeated exposure to the word families of the MAWL in a variety
of contexts may significantly contribute to the acquisition of the deep-going properties of
this important set of medical academic words.
The MAWL can also help learners study EMP academic vocabulary in a more con-
scious and manageable way. The MAWL provides a clear and direct access to the most
452 J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458
frequently used medical vocabulary for EMP learners and enables them to conduct explicit
learning of vocabulary when these words are first introduced to the learners. With more
exposure to medical texts, the learners will consolidate the vocabulary knowledge acquired
from the MAWL. This pattern of learning academic vocabulary in medical context may
also exemplify a compromise for a long-running debate about explicit learning versus
guessing from context.
5. Conclusion
The MAWL, a medical academic word list based on a Medical RAs Corpus with
1 093 011 running words, has been compiled for the better learning and application of med-
ical academic words in the discipline of medicine. Although a number of word lists of aca-
demic words in other disciplines have been reported, our MAWL has been so far the only
list of academic words targeted exclusively on medical science. By developing a list of the
frequently used medical academic words in medicine, we hope to inspire enough attention
of instructors and learners/users to this type of vocabulary. It would be of special signif-
icance for EMP students/instructors and medical professionals in learning or using med-
ical academic vocabulary in medical reading and writing.
Our research is only a preliminary study on the medical academic vocabulary used in
medical RAs. If possible, the MAWL needs to be rechecked in larger corpora or in other
genres of medicine, such as medical textbooks or spoken medical academic English. We
hope the availability of exercises and tests based on the MAWL will promote effective
and efficient teaching and learning of medical academic vocabulary.
Appendix
Appendix (continued)
Number Headword Number Headword Number Headword
46 potential 89 fraction 132 cycle
47 individual 90 insulin 133 investigate
48 expose 91 contrast 134 acute
49 involve 92 react 135 sequence
50 survive 93 source 136 select
51 target 94 available 137 maximize
52 respective 95 disorder 138 whereas
53 intervene 96 positive 139 peak
54 site 97 structure 140 elevation
55 per 98 multiple 141 image
56 design 99 generate 142 enzyme
57 primary 100 conclude 143 parameter
58 approach 101 medium 144 isolate
59 estimate 102 inhibit 145 mutation
60 component 103 complex 146 enhance
61 acid 104 distribute 147 calcium
62 baseline 105 major 148 glucose
63 procedure 106 tumor 149 appropriate
64 overall 107 initial 150 incidence
65 pathway 108 channel 151 conduct
66 inflammation 109 receptor 152 protocol
67 region 110 membrane 153 background
68 participate 111 stress 154 stimulate
69 lesion 112 strain 155 algorithm
70 technique 113 nuclear 156 establish
71 volume 114 ratio 157 efficacy
72 serum 115 approximate 158 hypothesis
73 define 116 release 159 feature
74 evaluate 117 transplant 160 interval
75 prior 118 surgery 161 mortality
76 assay 119 assess 162 array
77 injury 120 impact 163 derive
78 section 121 versus 164 series
79 task 122 drug 165 buffer
80 achieve 123 laboratory 166 specimen
81 symptom 124 minimize 167 focus
82 detect 125 onset 168 display
83 molecular 126 reveal 169 plasma
84 error 127 scan 170 abstract
85 incubate 128 monitor 171 grade
86 donor 129 criterion 172 secondary
87 intense 130 visual 173 strategy
88 chronic 131 duration (continued on next page)
454 J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458
Appendix (continued)
Number Headword Number Headword Number Headword
174 graft 217 diameter 260 density
175 undergo 218 cognitive 261 virus
176 peripheral 219 followup 262 interpret
177 transcription 220 fluid 263 document
178 despite 221 lipid 264 instruct
179 consist 222 magnetic 265 oral
180 status 223 margin 266 theory
181 furthermore 224 energy 267 illustrate
182 immune 225 locate 268 probe
183 reverse 226 survey 269 diagnose
184 infuse 227 software 270 consequence
185 author 228 profile 271 version
186 interact 229 attribute 272 create
187 issue 230 convention 273 dilute
188 negative 231 synthesis 274 skeletal
189 throughout 232 recover 275 novel
190 goal 233 objective 276 threshold
191 vein 234 filter 277 technology
192 chamber 235 segment 278 element
193 independent 236 compound 279 dynamic
194 proliferation 237 link 280 challenge
195 formation 238 guideline 281 typical
196 subsequent 239 extract 282 transfer
197 predict 240 proportion 283 aspect
198 correspond 241 regression 284 diet
199 correlate 242 questionnaire 285 cohort
200 regulate 243 discharge 286 external
201 exclude 244 respiratory 287 vector
202 metabolic 245 gender 288 antibiotic
203 device 246 summary 289 domain
204 recruit 247 promote 290 temporary
205 final 248 tract 291 linear
206 impair 249 toxic 292 plus
207 inject 250 relevant 293 digit
208 percent 251 episode 294 accurate
209 publish 252 acquire 295 concept
210 remove 253 communicate 296 transport
211 syndrome 254 internal 297 rotate
212 exhibit 255 dimension 298 input
213 blot 256 layer 299 absorb
214 defect 257 microscope 300 replicate
215 biopsy 258 adverse 301 distinct
216 index 259 recipient 302 radical
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 455
Appendix (continued)
Appendix (continued)
Number Headword Number Headword Number Headword
430 inferior 474 emphasize 518 audit
431 deviate 475 physiology 519 decade
432 trigger 476 oxide 520 compromise
433 loop 477 restore 521 cue
434 precursor 478 conflict 522 gland
435 perceive 479 phenomenon 523 assist
436 preliminary 480 invade 524 inner
437 undertake 481 restrict 525 intrinsic
438 substitute 482 attach 526 consume
439 whilst 483 longitude 527 suppress
440 scenario 484 technical 528 fragment
441 adapt 485 nevertheless 529 hypertension
442 adult 486 append 530 placebo
443 expand 487 infiltrate 531 dominant
444 cord 488 bacterium 532 text
445 fundamental 489 agonist 533 susceptible
446 feedback 490 rely 534 spinal
447 sum 491 capable 535 corporate
448 elicit 492 manipulate 536 principle
449 circulation 493 histology 537 relapse
450 tolerance 494 pharmacology 538 numerical
451 team 495 saline 539 resolve
452 sex 496 persist 540 mature
453 candidate 497 integrity 541 uniform
454 assume 498 precede 542 diverse
455 imply 499 rear 543 retain
456 terminal 500 mental 544 abdominal
457 vascular 501 demographic 545 lane
458 hormone 502 pathology 546 vital
459 minor 503 prominent 547 suspend
460 panel 504 apparatus 548 voluntary
461 aggressive 505 paradigm 549 diffuse
462 comprehensive 506 adjust 550 rationale
463 residual 507 crucial 551 simultaneous
464 perspective 508 nervous 552 transient
465 brief 509 gradient 553 secrete
466 trace 510 disrupt 554 methanol
467 equip 511 encounter 555 confer
468 accelerate 512 nitrogen 556 constitute
469 template 513 format 557 accomplish
470 mode 514 robust 558 enroll
471 diminish 515 spontaneous 559 embryo
472 consecutive 516 principal 560 logistic
473 foundation 517 transmit 561 project
J. Wang et al. / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 442–458 457
Appendix (continued)
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Wang Jing is an associate professor of English at the Department of Foreign Languages, Fourth Military Medical
University, China. She has taught courses in college English and published articles on academic reading and on
learning styles and communication strategies of Chinese learners.
Liang Shao-lan is an associate professor of English at the Department of Foreign Languages, Fourth Military
Medical University, China. She has published articles on learning strategies of Chinese English learners and on
genre analysis of English medical research articles.
Ge Guang-chun is a full professor of English and Chair at the Department of Foreign Languages, Fourth Military
Medical University, China. He has taught and published extensively in applied linguistics and ESP and EMP in
particular, where his areas of long-term interest include medical academic vocabulary, and genre and style
analysis of medical research articles.