CLS research seminar: Polysemous academic words, pedagogical perspectives

Abstract

Teaching, learning and assessment of academic vocabulary, defined as words occurring frequently in academic discourse across disciplines, is a large and growing research area. While much of this work has centred on academic word lists such as Coxhead’s Academic Word List (2000) and Gardner & Davies’s Academic Vocabulary List (2014), far less attention has been paid to the nature of academic vocabulary and its implications for pedagogy. One aspect of academic vocabulary deserving particular attention is polysemy, i.e., a type of meaning variation where a lexical item has two or more distinct meaning senses. Specifically, some academic words have different meanings when used in general and discipline-specific contexts (e.g., ‘solution to a problem’ and ‘solution of ammonia in water’ in chemistry) or different meanings in different disciplines (e.g., ‘function’ in mathematics and social sciences). Such words may be challenging to students since students tend to assume that words are monosemous (e.g. Frantzen, 2003) and that the meaning sense(s) of polysemous words they are familiar with apply to all contexts in which the word occurs. Additionally, students have difficulties with selecting appropriate definitions from the dictionary entries of polysemous words (Nesi & Haill, 2002).
Drawing on my recent and ongoing work in this area (Skoufaki & Petrić, 2021; Skoufaki, Petrić, Jablonkai & Curry, in review), I will first discuss the nature and extent of polysemy in the Academic Vocabulary List. I will then share some of the findings of our research on how students engage with polysemous academic words when sitting a productive-knowledge vocabulary test, focusing in particular on the kinds of knowledge they draw on when solving polysemous vocabulary test items. This will lead to a discussion of the pedagogical implications of the findings and recommendations for pedagogical interventions focusing on teaching polysemous academic vocabulary.

References

• Coxhead, A. (2000). A new Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238.  
• Frantzen, D. (2003). Factors affecting how second language Spanish students derive meaning from context. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 168–199.
• Gardner, D., & Davies, M. (2014). A new Academic Vocabulary List. Applied Linguistics, 35, 305–327.
• Nesi, H., & Haill, R. (2002). A study of dictionary use by international students at a British university. International Journal of Lexicography, 15, 277–305.  
• Skoufaki, S., & Petrić, B. (2021). Exploring polysemy in the Academic Vocabulary List: A lexicographic study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 54, 101038.