Averil Coxhead’s research while affiliated with Victoria University of Wellington and other places

The New Zealand government delivered regular 1 p.m. televised COVID‐19 briefings from March 2020. These events had a crucial communicative function and were usually headed by top government and medical officials. This study focuses on technical vocabulary in a corpus made up of these briefings, including single words (grouped into technical word families) and acronyms (e.g., bubble and PPE ) as well as the most frequent two to five‐word multiword units (MWUs; e.g., case numbers , genomic sequencing , and chains of transmission ) containing at least one technical single‐word family member. The corpus consists of 20 prepared speeches: 10 each in 2020 and 2021 by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director‐General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield (50,782 tokens). The results showed that 6.02% of the single‐word families (e.g., outbreak(‐s) , contact(‐s/‐less )) in the texts were technical, which may present a challenge for comprehension. Unsurprisingly, the Director‐General of Health used more technical vocabulary than the Prime Minister. The top 20 MWUs containing technical vocabulary were identified in the corpus. Most were two‐word collocations (e.g., negative test, testing centre/s , and number of tests ). Implications for identifying and dealing with technical vocabulary in both government communications and language education are discussed.

Corpora and corpus tools are essential resources for modern vocabulary research. On one hand, corpora can provide researchers with a powerful evidence base for their analyses. On the other hand, corpus tools can facilitate efficient management and analysis of huge data sets and thereby greatly expand the scope and rigor of research. This means that corpora and corpus tools enable a previously unattainable level of scientific rigor in the study of the vocabulary. They have changed the way that researchers approach the study of individual vocabulary items, the vocabulary of a whole language, language variety or domain of language use, and the vocabulary of individual texts. However, corpus analysis of vocabulary needs to be aware of the core methodological issues in any type of corpus analysis: the absence of negative evidence, automated corpus analysis being limited to form‐based information processing rather than meaning‐based processing, and the standards that need to be met to support generalizations from corpus observations. This entry begins with a brief explanation of a corpus and moves on to some key findings from corpus‐based research on vocabulary. The next sections focus on word, language level, and then text‐level vocabulary research, along with examples and suggestions for further reading.

Multiple repetitions of collocations in second language (L2) reading produce gains in collocational knowledge. However, it is less clear how typographic enhancement affects the learning of different types of L2 collocations through reading. The present experiment investigated contextual learning of English lexical (verb + noun) and grammatical (preposition + noun) collocations by Chinese speakers over two days. We manipulated the learning conditions by bolding or not bolding multiple instances of the target collocations in reading texts. A cued-recall (gapfill) post-test was used to measure collocational knowledge. We observed greater accuracy of responses with grammatical (but not lexical) collocations when the collocations were bolded than when they were not bolded. We argue that bolding likely made prep + noun collocations more perceptually salient to the learners during reading. We conclude that contextual learning of L2 grammatical collocations is likely to benefit from drawing explicit attention to the whole expressions in written input.

Advocating for best practices within aviation English language research, this volume offers deeper insights into the practical, policy-based, and societal contexts in which International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) language standards are embedded. English is the official language for international pilot-air traffic controller (ATC) communications, mandated by the ICAO. It is also thede factouniversal common language for all other forms of communication, including the language of maintenance technicians (and maintenance manuals), aeronautical engineers, cabin crew, ground staff, and aviation business professionals. In this book, renowned academic experts and aviation professionals come together to explore a variety of research trends, providing an effective and efficient analysis of the language needs of the aviation industry, its future directions, and an extended look at linguistic principles in action. Chapters engage in detail with research data, case studies, and concrete examples of interactional tasks, transactional exchanges and radiotelephony. They also examine the common vocabulary and phrasal patterns in aviation discourse required to communicate successfully in various roles and contexts within the aviation industry. The result is a meaningful contribution to the global development and improvement of standards of aviation research; investigations of the role of language in aviation accidents; and research into language as a human factor in aviation communications, customer service, and intercultural (mis)communication.

Despite extensive research on assessing collocational knowledge, valid measures of academic collocations remain elusive. With the present study, we begin an argument-based approach to validate two Academic Collocation Tests (ACTs) that assess the ability to recognize and produce academic collocations (i.e., two-word units such as key element and well established) in written contexts. A total of 343 tertiary students completed a background questionnaire (including demographic information, IELTS scores, and learning experience), the ACTs, and the Vocabulary Size Test. Forty-four participants also took part in post-test interviews to share reflections on the tests and retook the ACTs verbally. The findings showed that the scoring inference based on analyses of test item characteristics, testing conditions, and scoring procedures was partially supported. The generalization inference, based on the consistency of item measures and testing occasions, was justified. The extrapolation inference, drawn from correlations with other measures and factors such as collocation frequency and learning experience, received partial support. Suggestions for increasing the degree of support for the inferences are discussed. The present study reinforces the value of validation research and generates the momentum for test developers to continue this practice with other vocabulary tests.

Reviewing is an important task in one's academic career. Learning the skills and gaining practice are often overlooked activities in postgraduate education programmes. English for Specific Purposes instituted a Student Editorial Board (SEB) in 2022 and tasked two new Associate Editors to provide mentorship in reviewing over the course of a year. This paper focuses on the key questions which arose through mentoring meetings, such as the processes a paper goes through before it gets sent out for review and how to frame critical and supportive reviews. It also discusses the development of skills through membership in the SEB, drawing on reviews drafted individually over the year and one-on-one mentoring sessions, as well as feedback and group meetings with SEB members, Associate Editors and a very experienced board member. The paper ends with suggestions on how early career academics might become reviewers and ways to approach and respond to a paper as a reviewer. The paper demonstrates that offering SEB positions in journals is beneficial for postgraduate students, editors and the field overall.

Second language (L2) learners stand to gain substantially from mastering a wide range of multiword expressions (MWEs), and several studies have examined the benefits of language courses that regularly draw learners’ attention to MWEs. However, most of these studies focused on the learners’ retention of the MWEs included in the course materials and did not examine a potential broader and longer term effect. In the present study, upper‐intermediate students of English ( N = 54) attended extracurricular classes over the course of 11 weeks (40 minutes per week) in which they either extracted MWEs from texts or engaged only in content‐related activities. Outside the context of the experiment, the students occasionally wrote essays as part of their regular L2 curriculum. One of these essays was collected before the intervention, another shortly afterward, and a third 5 months later. Three coders independently identified MWEs in these essays. Both postcourse essays written by the students who had focused on MWEs were found to be richer in MWEs than those written by the comparison group. The difference was only in part due to a greater use of items encountered in the course texts, suggesting a broader and longer term effect on the students’ autonomous acquisition of MWEs.