Investigating the viability of collocation lists for students of English for Academic Purposes

A number of researchers are currently attempting to create listings of important collocationsfor students of EAP. However, so far these attempts have 1) failed to include positionallyvariablecollocations, and 2) not taken sufficient account of variation across disciplines. Thepresent paper describes the creation of one listing of positionally-variable academiccollocations and evaluates the extent to which it is likely to be useful to students from acrossa wide range of disciplines. A number of key findings emerge. First, cross-disciplinarycollocations differ in type from the collocations on which most researchers have traditionallyfocused in that they tend not to be combinations of two lexical words, but rather pairings ofone lexical and one grammatical word. Second, most of the words which are found inacademic collocations are not found on Coxhead’s influential Academic Word List. This, it isargued, reflects a serious methodological weakness in Coxhead’s listing. Third, thevocabulary needs of students in the arts and humanities are characteristically different fromthose of students in other disciplines. Researchers and teachers therefore need to deal withthese learners separately.

Keywords:

collocations , formulaic language , academic writing , academic word list