The lexical profile of academic spoken English

Limitations

Does not compare course types (seminars and lectures)

Ignores other factors that help to comprehend academic spoken English

The research is based on British academic spoken English

The drawbacks in the Range program (used as a tool to classify words)

For good comprehension - 95%
For adequate comprehension- 98%

The AWL accounted for 4.41% tokens in the academic spoken corpus

With (AWL) 3000 word families, Without AWL 4000 to reach 95%
With AWL 6000-7000 word families, Without AWL 8000 to reach 98%

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Materials (British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus) 160 lectures, 39 seminars

Social Science

Physical Science

Life and Medical Science

Art and Humanities

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The variation in vocabulary size needed to reach 95% and 98% vary across sub-corpora

Social Science (3000-5000 to reach 95-98%)

Medical Science (5000-13000 to reach 95-98%)

The lexical demands of academic spoken English

The coverage of the Academic Word List (AWL) in academic spoken English

Research findings