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Two studies examine technical vocabulary in specialized texts, indicating significant proportions in each text type.
This article describes two studies of technical vocabulary, one using an anatomy text and the other an applied linguistics text. Technical vocabulary was found by rating the words in the texts on a four step scale. It was found that technical vocabulary made up a very substantial proportion of both the different words and the running words in the texts, with one in every three running words in the anatomy text, and one in every five in the applied linguistics text being a technical word. A considerable number of technical words were from the first 2000 words of English and the Academic Word List. The article ends with suggestions for helping learners notice and learn technical vocabulary.
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Chung et al. (2003) studied this question.
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