A core meaning-based analysis of English semi-technical vocabulary in the medical field

IF 3.2 1区文学 Q1 LINGUISTICS

English for Specific Purposes Pub Date : 2023-04-01 DOI:10.1016/j.esp.2023.01.006

Chinh Ngan Nguyen Le, Julia Miller

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Semi-technical vocabulary, a type of vocabulary with both a technical and non-technical meaning (e.g., colon: part of the large intestine; punctuation mark), is an area of controversy owing to disagreement over its definition and characteristics. While it is widely held that learning technical vocabulary is critical for learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), several studies have also focused on semi-technical vocabulary because these words often have multiple meanings, depending on the context, and may therefore be harder to learn and understand than purely technical words. This study aims to revisit semi-technical vocabulary in medicine to address these controversial issues by re-evaluating a 595 semi-technical medical word list developed by Hsu (2013). A core meaning-based analysis identified 302 potentially confusing semi-technical medical words. These are mostly mid-frequency words; some are academic and low-frequency words. The findings also revealed pedagogic challenges associated with word form frequency-based lists deserving of further research.

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基于核心意义的医学英语半专业词汇分析

半技术词汇，一种既有技术含义又有非技术含义的词汇(例如，结肠:大肠的一部分;标点符号)是一个有争议的领域，由于其定义和特征的分歧。虽然人们普遍认为学习技术词汇对学习专用英语(ESP)至关重要，但一些研究也关注半技术词汇，因为这些词汇通常根据上下文有多种含义，因此可能比纯技术词汇更难学习和理解。本研究旨在通过重新评估Hsu(2013)开发的595个半技术医学词汇表，重新审视医学中的半技术词汇，以解决这些有争议的问题。一项基于核心意义的分析确定了302个可能令人困惑的半技术性医学词汇。这些大多是中频词;有些是学术词汇和低频率词汇。研究结果还揭示了与基于词形频率的列表相关的教学挑战，值得进一步研究。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

English for Specific Purposes LINGUISTICS-

CiteScore

5.70

自引率

8.00%

发文量

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： English For Specific Purposes is an international peer-reviewed journal that welcomes submissions from across the world. Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English.