What is Academic Vocabulary? by James F. Baumann and Michael F. Graves

What is Academic Vocabulary?

James F. Baumann and Michael F. Graves

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

The purpose of this article is to define academic vocabulary. First, the authors attempted to bring some clarity to literary vocabulary and academic language which were then placed within academic domain knowledge. Second, they compared and contrasted definitions of specific and general academic vocabulary. Third, they reviewed typologies that Fisher and Frey; Harmon, Wood, and Hedrick; as well as Hiebert and Lubliner have proposed to organize academic vocabulary. Finally, they considered some of the procedures Graves, Fisher and Frey, as well as Marzano and Pickering which have recommended for identifying academic vocabulary for instruction. The result is a scheme for classifying and selecting academic vocabulary for instruction. The classification of academic vocabulary is fallen into five types. The first type is domain-specific academic vocabulary. It is the relatively low-frequency, content-specific words and phrases that appear in content area textbooks and other technical writing materials. The second type is general academic vocabulary. It is words that appear reason ably frequently within and across academic domains. The third type is literary vocabulary. It is words that authors of literature use to describe characters, settings, and characters' problems and actions. The fourth type is Meta language. It is terms used to describe the language of literacy and literacy instruction and words used to describe processes, structures, or concepts commonly included in content area texts. The last type is symbols. It is icons, emoticons, graphics, mathematical notations, electronic symbols, and so forth that are not conventional words. In sum, academic vocabulary is vocabulary that includes in the five types of the authors’ scheme.

The authors put themselves as informants in this article. They give their scheme for classifying and selecting academic vocabulary for instruction. They give their pattern of thought how they produce the scheme. They collect all information about definitions of academic vocabulary, typologies, and procedure for identifying academic vocabulary, after that they analyze them.

At first, this classification seems perfect. Yet, after I reread again, I found that Meta language can be included into domain-specific academic vocabulary or literary vocabulary; because based on the definition of meta language, vocabulary of meta language can be found in literary textbook and the vocabulary used to describe the language of literacy and literacy instruction. It means that the function of Meta language is almost the same as literary vocabulary. In addition, Meta language used to describe processes, structures, or concepts commonly included in content area. This function is almost the same as domain-specific vocabulary which refers to relatively low-frequency, content-specific words and phrases that appear in content area textbooks and other technical writing materials.

I always do the same step for defining something as what this article did. I collect all information about the definition of the thing I want to define. Then I analyze them and finally make my own definition.