Vocabulary in academic lectures

Vocabulary is essential for comprehending lectures in university courses. No studies have explicitly compared vocabulary in lectures from different contexts. In this study, three corpora were developed from university lectures in EMI courses, non-EMI courses, and open access EMI courses. Analysis of the vocabulary load showed that lectures in non-EMI courses were more lexically demanding than open access EMI courses, which were more lexically demanding than EMI courses. Analysis of the coverage of Dang et al.’s (2017) Academic Spoken Word List (ASWL) showed that compared to general words, learning ASWL words is a shortcut for learners to improve their lecture comprehension. Moreover, while knowledge of items from all ASWL levels could benefit learners from the three contexts, attention to Levels 1–3 items would probably be more beneficial for those studying in EMI courses and open access EMI courses. Attention to Level 4 items appeared to be more useful for those studying in non-EMI courses.