Lexical richness in research articles: Corpus-based comparative study among advanced Chinese learners of English, English native beginner students and experts

• Published in: Journal of English for academic purposes Vol. 47; p. 100894
• Main Authors: Lei, Siyu, Yang, Ruiying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2020
• Subjects: Chinese PhD candidates; Expertise; Lexical richness; Nativeness; Chinese PhD candidates; Nativeness; Expertise; Lexical richness; Research articles
• ISSN: 1475-1585; 1878-1497
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100894

The current study respectively compares lexical richness, i.e. lexical diversity, density and sophistication in research article manuscripts by Chinese PhD candidates (CPhD), unpublished research papers by native final-year undergraduates and master-level students (Native Beginner Students, NBS) and published research articles (RAs) by native experts (NE). It aims to sketch the profile of CPhD’s use of vocabulary in terms of the three measures of lexical richness in comparison to the NBS and the NE. Our data consisted of 142 RA manuscripts by CPhD, 71 unpublished research papers by NBS, and 128 published RAs by NE in the field of science and engineering. The results showed that CPhD’s lexical richness levels are between NBS and NE. Besides, the three measures of CPhD are not balanced, namely, the lexical diversity is the lowest, similar to that of NBS, the lexical sophistication is in the middle and the lexical density is similar to that of NE. Comparison of the three groups of data indicates that academic expertise may play a more important role than nativeness in the writing of RAs. Integration of EAP instruction with discipline related research activities would be an important way to develop students’ ability of vocabulary use in RA writing. •Native experts significantly outperformed native beginner students in all lexical richness measures, with Chinese PhD students in the middle.•In the writing of research articles academic expertise is probably playing a major role while nativeness does not have an obvious advantage.•Effective EAP instruction on linguistic features should be integrated with activities that can enhance students’ academic expertise.