From Needs Analysis to the Establishment of a University Vocabulary List for English Majors

This paper concerns the academic vocabulary needs of undergraduate English majors in a tertiary context Azerbaijan. Based on results previous studies, it is suggested that developing an appropriate course material to meet specific learning these students will be beneficial for them. Thus, this study aims identify percentage running words and high-frequency word families beyond 2,000 most-frequent university textbook corpus help attain 98% lexical coverage. To address majors’ scant knowledge, University Vocabulary List has been created. First, comprising used 11 subject-specific textbooks across subject areas taught at Azerbaijan Languages was compiled. Next, range frequency distribution British National Corpus scale 2,000-word examined. Finally, 396 most frequently occurring were chosen; formed proposed majors, accounting 6.96% The families, including proper nouns, provide text coverage 97.28%, which only marginally lower than threshold by Laufer Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010) Nation (2006). It is, therefore, argued represents sufficiently frequent relevant load whose secondary educational background first-year general have not equipped them linguistic challenges they face initial stages their education. article concludes stating pedagogical implications learners’ knowledge use families.