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Knowledge of core academic vocabulary plays a major role in many gate keeping tests for higher education and is critical to successful academic performance. While researchers have described the linguistic characteristics of academic language use from a variety of perspectives, including the use of academic vocabulary, many of the investigations focus on the texts that students are exposed to or discuss how to teach those words. Yet, relatively few studies explore how students actually use these words in their scholarly papers. The goal of the present study is to investigate academic vocabulary use by non-native English speaker writers situated in a higher educational classroom setting. First, we explore relationships between the amount of academic vocabulary employed and the perceived quality of student writing. Second, we examine differences in the use of academic words across assignments, drafts, and levels of instruction. Results showed significant relationships between academic vocabulary use and essay scores in some text-types, and differences in the way academic vocabulary is used across text-types and levels of instruction, independent of the drafts. A closer analysis showed that rhetorical purposes have a strong impact on the amount of academic vocabulary used. Also, no difference between drafts calls for pedagogical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper investigates the way a postgraduate student on an MA TESOL programme at a UK university constructed summative and formative messages from the written feedback she received on her first assignment, and the extent to which those messages corresponded with marker intentions. The study concludes that the participant was able to construct appropriate summative and formative messages with regard to aspects of her written expression such as lexical choice but showed limited ability to construct summative or formative messages from feedback concerned with argument, analysis or task achievement. The study highlights the importance of shared understandings; of making explicit the formative messages embedded within summative feedback; of the need to embrace a conception of feedback as dialogue rather than monologic telling; of issues of power, and of the need to empower students to seek out and negotiate rather than passively receive feedback; and of the need to understand the production and consumption of feedback within a wider context of affordances and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]