Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

ENGLISH FOR
SPECIFIC
PURPOSES
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp

Establishment of a Medical Academic Word Listq

Jing Wang, Shao-lan Liang, Guang-chun Ge *
Department of Foreign Languages, Fourth Military Medical University, Xian, China

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 corpus 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 conrm that medical academic vocabulary plays an important role in medical 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.
2008 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The acquisition of vocabulary has long been considered to be a crucial component of
learning a language (Coady, Magoto, Hubbard, Graney, & Mokhtari, 1993; Nation,
2001) because the breadth and depth of a students vocabulary will have a direct inuence
upon the descriptiveness, accuracy and quality of his or her writing (Read, 1998). Nagy
(1988) also claimed that vocabulary is a major prerequisite and causative factor in comprehension. The dramatically large number of English words, however, is a learning goal far
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 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 Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

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 dierent stages of learning. Nations
(2001) division of vocabulary into four levels high frequency words, academic vocabulary, technical vocabulary and low frequency words indicates that some words deserve
more attention and eort than others in dierent phases of language learning or for dierent purposes. According to Nation and Waring (1997), it is generally agreed that the
beginners of English learning should focus on the rst 2000 most frequently occurring
word families of English in the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953), while for intermediate or advanced learners who usually study English for academic purposes, the command 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 settings, 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 diculty with is known,
in ESP jargon, as non-subject-specic semi-technical vocabulary or academic vocabulary
(Li & Pemberton, 1994; Shaw, 1991; Thurstun & Candlin, 1998).

1.1. Academic vocabulary

Academic vocabulary, which is also called sub-technical vocabulary (Cowan, 1974) or
semi-technical vocabulary (Farrell, 1990), is viewed as formal, context-independent
words with a high frequency and/or wide range of occurrence across scientic disciplines,
not usually found in basic general English courses; words with high frequency across scientic disciplines (Farrell, 1990, p. 11). The high frequency occurrence of academic words
in academic text has been conrmed by some researchers. Sutarsyah, Nation, and Kennedy (1994) reported that academic vocabulary accounted for 8.4% of the tokens in the
Learned and Scientic sections of the LOB and Wellington corpora, and for 8.7% of
the tokens in economics texts. Coxhead (2000) reported that the academic vocabulary
in her Academic Word List covered 10% of the tokens in her 3 500 000 running word academic corpus. Santos research (2000) revealed that roughly 16% of the words in his textbook samples across dierent disciplines were academic words. This high coverage of
academic words in the academic texts has far exceeded the 5% ratio of the unknown to
the known comprehension threshold suggested by Laufer (1988), who has pointed out that
a learner has to know 95% of the words in a text to ensure reasonable comprehension of
the text because the ratio of unknown to known words over 5% is not sucient to allow
reasonably successful guessing of the meaning of the unknown words. In addition, Kuehn
(1996) observed that knowledge of academic words dierentiated academically well-prepared from under-prepared college students from all backgrounds. The ndings from these
studies clearly indicate that EAP learners, without sucient knowledge of academic
vocabulary, cannot deal eectively with reading materials for various types of academic
tasks they are supposed to fulll (Laufer & Nation, 1999). However, procient use of academic vocabulary is one of the most challenging tasks in ESP students word expansion.
Anderson and Freebody (1981) found that academic words were the words most often
identied as unknown by her students in academic texts. Based on his study, Farrell
(1990) reported that the lack of knowledge was partly the result of the assumption of some

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J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

subject teachers that their students knew these words and as a result they seldom taught
these words explicitly.

1.2. Previous studies on academic vocabulary list development

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 dierent disciplines. By analyzing 301 800 words in textbooks and lectures
published in journals covering 19 academic disciplines, Campion and Elley (1971) developed 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. Lynns (1973) and Ghadessys (1979) word lists were drawn up by
counting the words for which foreign students wrote annotations in their university textbooks and the words that the students had found dicult during their reading. Xue and
Nation (1984) combined the four earlier-compiled word lists (Campion and Elleys, Praninskass, Lynns, and Ghadessys) into the University Word List (UWL), consisting of
about 800 words that were not in the rst 2000 words of the GSL but that were of high frequency and of wide range in academic texts. Xue and Nations 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 Rangethe software which could calculate how
often a word occurred (its frequency) and in how many dierent texts in the corpus it
occurred (its range). The texts in her corpus were selected from dierent 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 families 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 nd the vocabulary problems encountered by the computer science students in reading academic texts. She noted that academic vocabulary was semantically distinct 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 academic 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 engineering students, regardless of their elds of specialization. She argued that academic
vocabulary should be given more attention in the ESP classroom.

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445

Despite the academic vocabulary lists across dierent disciplines compiled respectively
by some researchers, there were few detailed studies exclusively on medical academic
vocabulary used in the eld 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 implications. Chen and Ge (2007) analyzed the occurrence and distribution of the AWL word
families in medical RAs. Their ndings conrmed 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 eorts 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 dierent
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 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.
2. Methodology
2.1. Corpus establishment
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 genremedical research articles, because reading and writing medical RAs is the fundamental concern for most learners/users of English for Medical Purposes (EMP).
2.1.1. Data collection
All the written medical RAs to be adopted in the corpus were downloaded from the
database ScienceDirect Online (http://www.sciencedirect.com), the worlds largest electronic collection of science, technology and medicine with full text and bibliographic information, accessed at the library of the Fourth Military Medical University (FMMU). The
database ScienceDirect Online contains over 1800 journals, including almost every top title
across 24 disciplines from natural science to social science, and is considered to be one of
the most authoritative and representative databases.
In the discipline of Medicine and Dentistry of ScienceDirect Online, there were 32 subject areas at the time of our study, covering almost all the elds of medical science. The
samples in the corpus were chosen from the following 32 subject areas.
1.
2.
3.

Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine

Cardiology and Cardiovascular
Medicine
Clinical Neurology

Line missing

17. Medicine and Dentistry

18. Nephrology
19. Obstetrics, Gynecology and Womens
Health

446

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

Complementary and Alternative

Medicine
Critical Care and Intensive Care
Medicine
Dentistry, Oral Surgery and
Medicine
Dermatology
Emergency Medicine
Endocrinology, Diabetes and
Metabolism
Forensic Medicine
Gastroenterology
Health Informatics
Hematology
Hepatology
Immunology, Allergology and
Rheumatology
Infectious Diseases

20. Oncology
21. Ophthalmology
22. Orthopedics, Sports Medicine and
Rehabilitation
23. Otorhinolaryngology and Facial Plastic
Surgery
24. Pathology and Medical Technology
25. Perinatology, Pediatrics and Child
Health
26. Psychiatry and Mental Health
27. Public Health and Health Policy
28. Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
29. Radiology and Imaging
30. Surgery
31. Transplantation
32. Urology

All the sample medical RAs included in the corpus were kept at their original length,
written in the internationally conventionalized IMRD (IntroductionMethodResultDiscussion) structure, published in the years 20002006 and written by native English speaking writers by Woods (2001) strict criteria (rst authors had to have names native to the
country concerned and also be aliated with an institution in countries where this language is spoken as the rst language).
A three-round selection was conducted in choosing the sample medical RAs for the corpus. In the rst round, we took each of the 32 subject areas as one stratum and then by
stratied random sampling we selected 3 journals from each of the 32 subject areas/stratum, totaling 96 journals. In the second round, we randomly selected one issue out of each
of the 96 journals obtained in the rst 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-fullling 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).
2.1.2. Data processing
In this study, data processing incorporated the standardization of the medical RAs to
be stored in the corpus and the normalization of the words in the to-be-stored RAs. For
the standardization of the medical RAs included in the corpus, the charts, diagrams, bibliographies and some components in texts, which were not able to be processed by computer analyzing programs or should not be included in the lexical analysis in the chosen
medical RAs, were removed so as to eliminate the factors unrelated to the lexical analysis
and to ensure that the texts stored in the corpus be readable by the computer software. The

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

447

normalization of words was fullled automatically by the computer software. The computer software would read all inections 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 dened by Bauer and Nation (1993), is the base word plus its
inected forms and transparent derivations, including all closely related axed forms as
well as the stems most frequent, productive and regular prexes, suxes and perceived
transparency. According to Coxhead (2000, p. 218), comprehending regularly inected
or derived members of a family does not require much more eort 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 standardization of the sample texts and normalization of words, the words in the corpus were
counted and sorted automatically by computer.
2.2. List development
2.2.1. Word selection criteria
The three principles (specialized occurrence, range and frequency of a word family)
used by Coxhead in developing the AWL were adopted in our study with some adjustment. In her study, Coxhead named wide-range word families as the word families whose
members occur in at least half of the 28 subject areas in her corpus. In this study, we also
set 50% as the criterion for inclusion. The members of a word family to be included in the
MAWL should occur in 16 subject areas, half of the 32 subject areas in our corpus. The
least frequency of the members of a word family to be included in the MAWL was 30
times, a third of Coxheads 100 times, for the number of the running words (1 000 000)
in our corpus was only about one third of that (3 500 000) in Coxheads corpus.
Coxhead (2000) also reported that in her AWL word selection, range was the rst criterion and frequency the second because a word count based mainly on the frequency
would have been biased by longer texts and topic-related words. This principle was also
applied in the present study. Only word families covering 16 subject areas or more would
be included in the MAWL, while word families occurring with very high frequency but
covering fewer than 16 subject areas would be excluded.
In sum, all the nally included word families in the MAWL met the following word
selection criteria:
1. Specialized occurrence: The word families included had to be outside the rst 2000 most
frequently occurring words of English, as represented by Wests 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.
As is known, the division between technical vocabulary and academic/sub-technical
vocabulary is not always distinct (Chung & Nation, 2003; Mudraya, 2006). In some cases,
arbitrary decisions need to be made to distinguish technical vocabulary and academic/subtechnical vocabulary. In compiling the MAWL, two experienced professors of English for
Medical Purposes from our department were consulted whenever any arbitrary decision

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J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

was needed in the inclusion or the elimination of some criteria-fullling controversial word
families in or from the computer-screened-out candidate list.
2.2.2. MAWL development
Following the standardization of the medical RAs and the normalization of the words,
the frequency and the range of the word families in the corpus were counted and listed by
computer software. The word selection criteria were then applied to locate our target word
families to be included in the MAWL. The word families included in the GSL were eliminated rst and then from the remaining word families, the word families occurring at least
in 16 or more of the 32 subject areas were selected. From the screened-out word families,
only those that occurred at least 30 times in the corpus of medical research articles were
selected for the candidate word list. If there was any uncertainty about any of the criteria-fullling word families in the computer-screened-out candidate list, two experienced
English professors who have taught and conducted studies on English for Medical Purposes for more than 20 years were consulted, as mentioned above, and they made the decision on whether the word families in question should be included in or excluded from the
nalized word list. The nalized list was termed as the Medical Academic Word List
(MAWL).
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 computer-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
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

pathogenesis
cytokine
epithelial
mitochondrial
carcinoma
ligand
situ
lymphoid
vitro
pulmonary
posterior
anterior
lysis
cardia

146
119
115
110
80
79
68
68
65
65
63
63
60
56

22
18
17
16
16
17
16
16
17
16
18
18
16
18

15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

necrosis
cutaneous
stent
vivo
hepatic
aortic
ischemia
cerebral
dorsal
hemorrhage
pathophysiology
exogenous
phenotypic

55
55
52
52
51
50
50
49
46
44
44
39
33

16
16
16
17
19
18
17
17
16
18
17
16
16

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

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 families (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 frequently 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
data
muscular
signicant
clinic
analyze
respond
factor
method
protein
tissue
dose
gene
previous
demonstrate
normal
process
similar
concentrate
function
therapy
indicate
area
obtain
research
vary
activate
require
induce
cancer

4421
2226
2049
2039
1598
1447
1427
1237
1209
1122
1097
1035
999
926
861
819
819
810
787
756
749
745
734
705
704
695
673
669
668
667

3.31
1.66
1.53
1.52
1.19
1.08
1.07
0.92
0.90
0.84
0.82
0.77
0.75
0.69
0.64
0.61
0.61
0.61
0.59
0.57
0.56
0.56
0.55
0.53
0.53
0.52
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50

32
32
23
32
32
32
32
32
32
28
29
26
28
32
32
32
32
32
27
32
29
32
32
32
32
32
31
32
30
22

100.00
100.00
71.88
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
87.50
90.63
81.25
87.50
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
84.38
100.00
90.63
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
96.88
100.00
93.75
68.75

450

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

Table 3
Subject-area coverage of word families in MAWL
Subject areas covered

Number of word families

32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16

104
31
30
37
32
27
29
31
38
22
32
35
38
29
40
35
33

%
16.69
4.98
4.82
5.94
5.14
4.33
4.65
4.98
6.10
3.53
5.13
5.62
6.10
4.65
6.42
5.62
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 dierent 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 United States alone, these wounds are estimated to aect 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 backow of venous blood. Venous congestion leads to leakage of blood and macromolecules into the dermis, which can act
as physical barriers to diusion of oxygen and nutrients from the vasculature into
the skin. Arterial insuciency 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 amputations annually in the United States, accounting for 4570% of all lower-extremity

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

451

amputations performed. Historically, treatment of the relatively small chronic

wounds has included the use of topical agents and occlusive dressings, and grafting
of split- or full-thickness skin. Skin grafts can provide timely wound coverage, but
may lead to painful donor sites which are slow to heal and may be unsuccessful
because of underlying deciencies in wound healing (p. 403).
Among the 305 words in the above passage, 37 belonged to the MAWL. The MAWL
text coverage in the passage was 12.13%, which was consistent with the results of our
study.
We have included only 623 base words of the word families in the MAWL, even though
derivative forms are sometimes more frequent than the base forms, because in most cases
learning the derived form requires very little extra work once the base form is known and if
learners have control of basic word-building processes (Xue & Nation, 1984). In the
Appendix, the words in the MAWL are listed according to the frequency of their occurrence in the corpus in a descending order, that is, the more frequently used word families
are listed prior to those appearing less frequently in the corpus. This frequency priority in
listing illustrates the relative usefulness of these words in medical English, which is one of
the major objectives of the present study.
Only 342 (54.90%) of the 623 word families in the MAWL overlapped with the 570
word families in the AWL. The marked dierence between the MAWL and the AWL
argues for itself that dierent practices and discourses of disciplinary communities require
a more restricted discipline-based lexical repertoire, which undermines the usefulness of
general academic word lists across dierent disciplines. Words like lesion and vein, though
they tend to be considered as technical terms by people outside medical eld, are included
in the MAWL as medical academic vocabulary because they are general purpose medical
words frequently used across dierent medical subject disciplines. Academic vocabulary or
semi-technical vocabulary is a class of words between technical and non-technical words
and usually with technical as well as non-technical implications. The word families
included in the MAWL are medical academic vocabulary common across various sub-disciplines of medicine but not within one single sub-discipline of medicine.
4. The pedagogical implications
The MAWL can serve as reference for a Medical English lexical syllabus. As the frequently 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 curriculum preparation, particularly in designing EMP course-books for learning medical academic 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 specic approach to learning medical academic vocabulary and facilitating instructors setting of their medical academic vocabulary teaching goals in dierent
stages. Well-timed and repeated exposure to the word families of the MAWL in a variety
of contexts may signicantly 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 conscious and manageable way. The MAWL provides a clear and direct access to the most

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J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

frequently used medical vocabulary for EMP learners and enables them to conduct explicit
learning of vocabulary when these words are rst 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 medical academic words in the discipline of medicine. Although a number of word lists of academic 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 significance for EMP students/instructors and medical professionals in learning or using medical 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 eective
and ecient teaching and learning of medical academic vocabulary.

Appendix
Medical Academic Word List (submitted by frequency of word families)

Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

Headword

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

cell
data
muscular
signicant
clinic
analyze
respond
factor
method
protein
tissue
dose
gene
previous
demonstrate

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

normal
process
similar
concentrate
function
therapy
indicate
area
obtain
research
vary
activate
require
induce
cancer

31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45

occur
role
evident
range
identify
period
outcome
phase
specic
liver
infect
culture
mediate
score
aect

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

453

Appendix (continued)
Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88

potential
individual
expose
involve
survive
target
respective
intervene
site
per
design
primary
approach
estimate
component
acid
baseline
procedure
overall
pathway
inammation
region
participate
lesion
technique
volume
serum
dene
evaluate
prior
assay
injury
section
task
achieve
symptom
detect
molecular
error
incubate
donor
intense
chronic

89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131

fraction
insulin
contrast
react
source
available
disorder
positive
structure
multiple
generate
conclude
medium
inhibit
complex
distribute
major
tumor
initial
channel
receptor
membrane
stress
strain
nuclear
ratio
approximate
release
transplant
surgery
assess
impact
versus
drug
laboratory
minimize
onset
reveal
scan
monitor
criterion
visual
duration

132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173

Headword

cycle
investigate
acute
sequence
select
maximize
whereas
peak
elevation
image
enzyme
parameter
isolate
mutation
enhance
calcium
glucose
appropriate
incidence
conduct
protocol
background
stimulate
algorithm
establish
ecacy
hypothesis
feature
interval
mortality
array
derive
series
buer
specimen
focus
display
plasma
abstract
grade
secondary
strategy
(continued on next page)

454

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Appendix (continued)
Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

Headword

174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216

graft
undergo
peripheral
transcription
despite
consist
status
furthermore
immune
reverse
infuse
author
interact
issue
negative
throughout
goal
vein
chamber
independent
proliferation
formation
subsequent
predict
correspond
correlate
regulate
exclude
metabolic
device
recruit
nal
impair
inject
percent
publish
remove
syndrome
exhibit
blot
defect
biopsy
index

217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259

diameter
cognitive
followup
uid
lipid
magnetic
margin
energy
locate
survey
software
prole
attribute
convention
synthesis
recover
objective
lter
segment
compound
link
guideline
extract
proportion
regression
questionnaire
discharge
respiratory
gender
summary
promote
tract
toxic
relevant
episode
acquire
communicate
internal
dimension
layer
microscope
adverse
recipient

260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302

density
virus
interpret
document
instruct
oral
theory
illustrate
probe
diagnose
consequence
version
create
dilute
skeletal
novel
threshold
technology
element
dynamic
challenge
typical
transfer
aspect
diet
cohort
external
vector
antibiotic
domain
temporary
linear
plus
digit
accurate
concept
transport
rotate
input
absorb
replicate
distinct
radical

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

455

Appendix (continued)
Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344

superior
contact
ensure
stable
prevalence
capture
degrade
anesthesia
optimal
kit
bias
proximal
constant
incorporate
sucient
sustain
label
barrier
zone
chart
implement
trauma
fund
context
hence
community
lateral
facilitate
trim
prolong
quantify
perception
accumulate
expert
grant
amplication
random
construct
mount
renal
environment
couple

345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387

laser
magnitude
formula
decit
alter
access
supplement
eliminate
graph
shift
capacity
qualitative
simulate
globe
modulate
output
attenuate
statistic
prescribe
dierentiate
equivalent
orient
practitioner
substantial
chemical
thereby
consent
intake
stance
trend
overnight
contribute
enable
spectrum
assign
option
implicate
aid
tag
portion
electron
cope
decline

388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429

Headword

species
unique
overlap
adjacent
node
transform
modify
manual
colleague
core
entry
decient
cascade
benet
identical
parallel
migrate
reagent
exceed
comprise
highlight
evolution
schedule
organism
predominant
cumulative
purchase
plot
seek
emerge
anity
valid
code
sterile
compute
prospect
utilize
deposit
column
contract
scar
axis
(continued on next page)

456

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

Appendix (continued)
Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

Headword

430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473

inferior
deviate
trigger
loop
precursor
perceive
preliminary
undertake
substitute
whilst
scenario
adapt
adult
expand
cord
fundamental
feedback
sum
elicit
circulation
tolerance
team
sex
candidate
assume
imply
terminal
vascular
hormone
minor
panel
aggressive
comprehensive
residual
perspective
brief
trace
equip
accelerate
template
mode
diminish
consecutive
foundation

474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517

emphasize
physiology
oxide
restore
conict
phenomenon
invade
restrict
attach
longitude
technical
nevertheless
append
inltrate
bacterium
agonist
rely
capable
manipulate
histology
pharmacology
saline
persist
integrity
precede
rear
mental
demographic
pathology
prominent
apparatus
paradigm
adjust
crucial
nervous
gradient
disrupt
encounter
nitrogen
format
robust
spontaneous
principal
transmit

518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561

audit
decade
compromise
cue
gland
assist
inner
intrinsic
consume
suppress
fragment
hypertension
placebo
dominant
text
susceptible
spinal
corporate
principle
relapse
numerical
resolve
mature
uniform
diverse
retain
abdominal
lane
vital
suspend
voluntary
diuse
rationale
simultaneous
transient
secrete
methanol
confer
constitute
accomplish
enroll
embryo
logistic
project

J. Wang et al. / English for Specic Purposes 27 (2008) 442458

457

Appendix (continued)
Number

Headword

Number

Headword

Number

Headword

562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582

insight
compliance
emission
soluble
comment
oxygen
warrant
route
morbidity
widespread
alcohol
conjugate
acknowledge
alternative
manifest
cluster
notion
render
malignancy
resemble
obvious

583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603

antigen
concomitant
fusion
elucidate
consensus
le
biology
urban
verify
speculate
postulate
routine
somewhat
catheter
odd
discrete
converse
span
augment
depict
adequate

604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623

neutral
thereafter
annual
plastic
professional
recall
entity
precise
successive
contaminate
tone
integrate
confound
profound
tension
dramatic
blast
encompass
consult
static

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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.