Lexical Richness in Scientific Journal Articles: A Comparison between ESL and EFL Writers
Keywords:
lexical richness, vocabulary knowledge, scientific journal articles, academic writing, ASEAN
Abstract
This study investigated lexical richness in research articles published by writers of ESL and EFL in the ASEAN countries. The question was whether there were any significant similarities and differences in terms of lexical richness in research articles between these two groups. The researchers employed three different lexical measures to find out the answer: (a) lexical density (how many content words were used), (b) lexical diversity (how wide-ranging words were used), and (c) lexical sophistication (how many advanced and unusual words were used). The primary data consisted of 40 research articles published by two ESL countries, namely Malaysia and the Philippines, and the other two EFL countries: Indonesia and Thailand and were taken from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE). The researchers analyzed the data by utilizing three measurement tools namely CLAWS Tagger, Moving-Average-Type-Token-Ratio (MATTR), and VocabProfiler, and compared the results between ESL and EFL using the Mann-Whitney U test. Interestingly, despite different total tokens in several aspects, the data analysis results indicated no significant difference between ESL and EFL writers in terms of lexical richness and how they employed vocabulary in their research articles. This study further discussed factors influencing the use of vocabulary by two groups and concluded with limitations of the study and future research directions.
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West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman.
Astridya, F. W. (2020). Lexical richness of the expository writing in Indonesian by senior high school students. Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature, 20(1).
Azodi, N., Karimi, F., & Vaezi, R. (2014). Measuring the Lexical Richness of Productive Vocabulary in Iranian EFL University Students’ Writing Performance. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4(9), 1837–1849. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.4.9.1837-1849
Bestgen, Y. (2017). Beyond single-word measures: L2 writing assessment, lexical richness and formulaic competence. System, 69, 65–78. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.08.004
Covington, M. A., & McFall, J. D. (2010). Cutting the gordian knot: The Moving-Average Type-Token Ratio (MATTR). Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 17(2), 94–100.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238.
Deerajviset, P. (2015). The ASEAN Community 2015 and English Language Teaching in Thailand. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 39-73-undefined.
Djiwandono, P. I. (2016). Lexical richness in academic papers: a comparison between students’ and lecturers’ essays. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v5i2.1345
Dumanig, F. P., & Symaco, L. P. (2012). Competing roles of the national language and English in Malaysia and the Philippines: Planning, policy and use. Journal of International and Comparative Education (JICE), 104–115.
Engber, C. A. (1995). The relationship of lexical proficiency to the quality of ESL compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/1060-3743(95)90004-7
Failasofah, F. (2018). Measuring Indonesian students’ lexical diversity and lexical sophistication. Indonesian Research Journal in Education, 2(2), 97–107.
Fauzan, U., Lubis, A.H., & Kurniawan, E. (2020). Rhetorical moves and linguistic complexity of research article abstracts in International Applied Linguistics Journals for English reading materials development. Asian ESP Journal, 16(5). Retrieved from https://www.asian-esp-journal.com/volume-16-issue-5-2-october-2020/
González-López, S., & López-López, A. (2015). Lexical analysis of student research drafts in computing. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 23(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.21638
Ha, H. S. (2019). Lexical Richness in EFL Undergraduate Students’ Academic Writing. ENGLISH TEACHING, 74(3). https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.74.3.201909.3
Hoover, D. L. (2003). Another perspective on vocabulary richness. . . Computers and Humanities, 37, 151–178.
Ibrahim, E. H. E., Muhamad, A. J., & Esa, Z. (2019). A Comparison of Lexical Richness in L2 Written Productions. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), 14(20). https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v14i20.11467
Indarti, D. (2019). Investigating lexical diversity of online English newspaper editorials across countries. . . Journal of Advanced English Studies, 2(2), 84–101.
Indarti, Dwi. (2020). Lexical richness of newspaper editorials published in Southeast Asian countries. Studies in English Language and Education, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v7i1.15032
Johansson, V. (2009). Lexical diversity and lexical density in speech and writing: a developmental perspective. Lund Working Papers in Linguistics, 52, 61–79.
Juanggo, W. (2018). Investigating lexical diversity and lexical sophistication of productive vocabulary in the written discourse of Indonesian EFL learners. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v8i1.11462
Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literature, 11–30.
Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual model (Vol. 1). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary Size and Use: Lexical Richness in L2 Written Production. Applied Linguistics, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/16.3.307
Lei, S., & Yang, R. (2020). Lexical richness in research articles: Corpus-based comparative study among advanced Chinese learners of English, English native beginner students and experts. . . Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 47.
Martin, I. P. (2014). English language teaching in the Philippines. World Englishes, 33(4), 472–485.
Noom-Ura, S. (2013). English-teaching problems in Thailand and Thai teachers’ professional development needs. English Language Teaching, 6(11), 139–147.
Read, J. (2000). Assessing Vocabulary. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rochma, A. F., & Triyono, S. (2019). A discourse analysis: Cohesion of the introduction section of research article. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(1). Retrieved from https://jeltl.org/index.php/jeltl/article/view/173
Sari, W. A. (2019). Lexical richness and syntactic complexity of the English exam papers of SBMPTN . Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya.
Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Šišková, Z. (2012). Lexical richness in EFL students’ narratives. University of Reading Language Studies Working Papers, 4, 26–36.
To, V., Fan, S., & Thomas, D. (2013). Lexical density and readability: A case study of English textbooks. Internet Journal of Language, Culture and Society, 37, 61–71.
Ulla, M. B. (2018). English language teaching in Thailand: Filipino teachers’ experiences and perspectives. Issues in Educational Research, 28(4), 1080-undefined.
Ure, J. (1971). Lexical density and register differentiation. In G. Perren and J.L.M. Trim (Ed.), . In G. Perren and J.L.M. Trim (eds), Applications of Linguistics, London: Cambridge University Press. 443-452. (p. .443-452). London: Cambridge University Press.
West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman.
Published
2021-05-19
How to Cite
Choemue, S., & Bram, B. (2021). Lexical Richness in Scientific Journal Articles: A Comparison between ESL and EFL Writers. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 6(1), 147-167. https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefl.v6i1.349
Section
Articles
