ERIC Number: EJ803844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Jun
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0346-251X
EISSN: N/A
Selecting Level-Specific Specialized Vocabulary Using Statistical Measures
Chujo, Kiyomi; Utiyama, Masao
System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, v34 n2 p255-269 Jun 2006
To find an easy-to-use, automated tool to identify technical vocabulary applicable to learners at various levels, nine statistical measures were applied to the 7.3-million-word "commerce and finance" component of the British National Corpus. The resulting word lists showed that each statistical measure extracted a different level of specialized vocabulary as measured by word length, vocabulary level, US native speaker grade level, and Japanese school textbook vocabulary coverage, and that these measures produced level-specific words; i.e., beginning-level basic business words were identified using "Cosine" and the "complimentary similarity measure"; intermediate-level business words were extracted using "log-likelihood", the "chi-square test", and the "chi-square test with Yates's correction"; and advanced-level business word lists were created using "mutual information" and "McNemar's test". We conclude that these statistical measures are effective tools for identifying multi-level specialized vocabulary for pedagogical purposes. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A