The document discusses reorganizing the Academic Word List for Spanish-speaking English language learners. It describes the original Academic Word List, which contains 570 academic words arranged in frequency-based sublists. It also discusses how the list was constructed based on a corpus of academic texts. The presentation will examine how many of the Academic Word List words are cognates for Spanish speakers and the challenges in determining what constitutes a cognate. It will also discuss procedures for analyzing each word as a true, partial, or false cognate.

1. The Academic Word List
Reorganized for Spanish-
Speaking ELLs
Robert W. Bushong II
ESL Instructor
Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies
University of Central Florida
rwbushong@yahoo.com PowerPoint
Presentation
Dr. Keith S. Folse
Professor
Department of Modern Languages
University of Central Florida
keith.folse@ucf.edu
Handout
46th Annual TESOL Convention and Exhibit, Philadelphia March 29, 2012

2. A master‟s degree thesis
involving Spanish and the
AWL (Academic Word List)
 a list of 570 academic words
 arranged in 10 sublists (9x60 + 1x10) by frequency
(Group 1 is more frequent than Group 10)
 AverilCoxhead – New Zealand (consider population)
 a corpus
 corpus-based word lists

3. How the List Was Constructed
 a corpus of 3.5 million words
 excludes the 2,285 words on the General Service List
(West, 1953)
 approximately 10% of an academic text (but less than
2% in fiction)
 words had to appear frequently AND widely (appear in at
least 15 of 28 different fields)

4. What is an “academic
word”?
 Many people have the mistaken impression that
these are words like CHROMOSOME or
HYPOTENUSE.
 The words are useful because they are “advanced”
words (i.e., beyond the GSL 2,285) that are used in a
variety of genres/topics.

5. What is an “academic
word”?
 SUBLIST 1:
area, approach, create, occur, similar
 SUBLIST 5:
aware, capacity, decline, precise, revenue
 SUBLIST 10:
adjacent, albeit, nonetheless, odd, undergo

6. How many of the AWL words
are cognates for Spanish-
speaking ELLs?
Problem:
What is a cognate?

7. An ELL from Colombia
writes:
The Congress must explicate
why we need another law
about attending school.
explicate?
Spanish: explicar ( = to
explain)

8. explicate  explication
explication [ˌ ɛksplɪˌke ɪʃən] noun
1. the act or process of explicating (explaining)
2. analysis or interpretation, esp. of a literary
passage or work or philosophical doctrine
3. a comprehensive exposition or description
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and
Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 2003

9. explicate  explication
NOT A COGNATE
The correct translation of EXPLICAR in English is
EXPLAIN, not EXPLICATE.

10. The Challenges in
Operationalizing “a
Cognate”
Just because the word exists does not mean it is a
cognate FOR THE AVERAGE STUDENT.
Remember – Our purpose is whether REAL PEOPLE
would recognize the words as cognates, not whether
there is a historical connection between the two,
something that would interest dictionary writers but
not necessarily educators in 2012.

11. What Is a Cognate?
“In the psycholinguistic literature, cognates are often defined as
words that share aspects of spelling, sound, and meaning across
languages. … In linguistics, cognates are often defined as
words that share a common etymological origin” (Sunderman&
Schwartz, 2008, p. 527).
e.g.,
The Word Cognate
Latin cognatus
“meaning „born together, kindred, related, from the same stock‟”
(Johnston, 1939, p. 4)
Romance language derivations:
Spanish cognado, Portuguese cognato, Catalan cognat
Each word has undergone what has been aptly described as a “phonetic
erosion…” (González, p. 293) from Latin.

12. Research Question
To what extent do the 570 headwords in the
Academic Word List consist of English-
Spanish true cognates, false cognates, partial
cognates, and non-cognates?

13. Cognates, Polysemes, &
Homographs
(1) Polyseme is an individual word with multiple, related
meanings.
e.g., area
(a) Housing is very expensive in the San Francisco area.
(b) The area of the office is 150 square feet.
(c) I’d rather be sitting in the nonsmoking area.
(d) Training is one area of the business that we could improve.
Directly quoted from Oxford American Dictionary for Learners of English (Oxford University
Press, 2010, p. 36)
(2) Homograph is a group of unrelated words that share one
written form.
e.g., contract
(a) The company signed the contract.
(b) His biceps would contract as he lifted weights.
(c) I got a vaccine so I would not contract the virus.

14. Six Features of a Cognate
(1) Cognate etymology
(2) Cognate semantics
(3) Cognate syntax
(4) Cognate morphology
(5) Cognate orthography (i.e., spelling)
(6) Cognate phonology (i.e., sound)

15. Six Features of a Cognate
(1) Cognate etymology compares the histories of words in cognate pairs.
e.g., visual/visual (Latin root word visualis)
goal/gol (English loanword gol)
(2) Cognate semantics analyzes the degree to which cognate pairs are similar in
meaning.
e.g., visual/visual, a shared core meaning
commodity/comodidad, no shared core meaning
(3) Cognate syntax analyzes the degree to which cognate pairs’ word forms share
parts of speech.
e.g., construct, either a verb or a noun
construir, a verb but not a noun
(4) Cognate morphology analyzes the degree to which cognate pairs share
morphemes.
e.g., communication (com-, uni, -tion) / comunicación (com-, uni, -ción)
(5) Cognate orthography (i.e., spelling) analyzes the degree to which cognate
pairs share spelling.
e.g., compare factor/factor and physical/físico
(6) Cognate phonology (i.e., sound) analyzes the degree to which cognate pairs
share pronunciation.
e.g., compare legal/legal and process/proceso

16. True Cognate: visual/visual

17. True Cognate:
chemical/químico

18. False Cognate:
allocate/alocar

19. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates

20. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates
True Cognates
• Do not need to be related (1) etymologically, and they do not need to be
perfect matches (2) semantically, (3) syntactically, (4) morphologically, (5)
orthographically, or (6) phonologically.
• Do need to have noticeably similar features.
• Do need to share one or more core meanings.
e.g., create/crear (verb) core meaning: to produce

21. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates
True Cognates
• Do not need to be related (1) etymologically, and they do not need to be
perfect matches (2) semantically, (3) syntactically, (4) morphologically, (5)
orthographically, or (6) phonologically.
• Do need to have noticeably similar features.
• Do need to share one or more core meanings.
e.g., goal/gol (noun) core meaning: an aim (of some sort)
goal(polyseme) meaning: (1) an objective or (2) a reference to soccer
gol (monoseme) meaning: a reference to soccer

22. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates
Partial Cognates
• Do not need to be related (1) etymologically, and they do not need to be
perfect matches (2) semantically, (3) syntactically, (4) morphologically, (5)
orthographically, or (6) phonologically.
• Do need to have noticeably similar features.
• Do need to share one or more core meanings.
• Do need to have one or more dissimilar core meanings.
e.g., affect/afectar (verb) core meaning: to impact (something or
someone)
affect (noun) core meaning: a psychological disposition
afecto (noun) core meaning: affection

23. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates
False Cognates
• Do not need to be related (1) etymologically, and they do not need to be
perfect matches (2) semantically, (3) syntactically, (4) morphologically, (5)
orthographically, or (6) phonologically.
• Do need to have noticeably similar features.
• Do not share core meanings.
e.g., allocate (verb) core meaning: to designate
alocar (verb) core meaning: to drive insane

24. Three Types of Cognates
True Cognates
Partial Cognates
False Cognates
Non-cognates
• Do not meet the requirements for (1) true cognates, (2) partial cognates, or
(3) false cognates.

25. Procedure
(1) Collected data from bilingual, monolingual, and cognate
dictionaries
(2) Compared data compiled from the dictionaries
(3) Consulted additional resources when the dictionary data
were insufficient
(4) Operationalized cognate as three types of cognates
(5) Compared cognates and homographs by using the data
collected in this study and an AWL homograph list (Ming-Tzu &
Nation, 2004)
(6) Labeled each AWL word as a true, partial, false, or non-cognate
(7) Compiled cognate lists by (a) alphabetical order and (b)
cognate type

27. Comprehensive Bilingual Dictionary of Spanish False Cognates,
2nded
(Hamel, 2004; p. 20)
(Hamel, 2004; p. 285)

28. English-Spanish Cognates Lexicon
(Rotavista, 2008; p. 137)

29. The Big Red Book of Spanish Vocabulary
(Thomas et al., 2005; p.
873)

30. Spanish-English Cognates
(Woods & Stovall, 2005; p. 4)

31. SpanishDict.com

32. EsTheFreeDictionary.com

34. Results

37. True Cognates (Excerpt)

38. Partial Cognates (Excerpt)

39. False Cognates (Excerpt)

40. Non-cognates (Excerpt)

41. Limitations
(1) Although cognate was operationalized as thoroughly as possible,
labeling a word takes a certain amount of judgment on the part of
the researcher. In this study, there was no second researcher to
verify inter-rater reliability.
(2) The researcher was not a fluent speaker of Spanish.

42. Implications
With knowledge of English-Spanish cognates on the AWL, teachers,
curriculum designers, and textbook writers can make better choices
about the following:
(1) the AWL words that need to be explicitly taught to Spanish-speaking
ELLs
(2) the amount of time necessary to be spend on each AWL word with
Spanish-speaking ELLs
Future Research
(1) To what extent can Spanish-speaking ELLs correctly identify
the English-Spanish cognates on the AWL?
(2) To what extent do the 570 headwords on the AWL consist of
cognates from another Romance language, such as
Portuguese, French, and Italian?

43. Works Cited (Literature Review)
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34,
213–238.
González, F.R. (2000). Spanish contribution to American English word
stock: An overview. American Speech, 75, 292–295.
Johnston, M.C. (1939). Cognate relationships between English and
Spanish vocabularies as a basis for instruction. Austin, TX:
Unpublished Doctoral Thesis.
Ming-Tzu, K.W., & Nation, P. (2004). Word meaning in academic English:
Homography in the Academic Word List. Applied Linguistics, 25,
291–314.
Oxford University Press. (2010). Oxford American Dictionary for Learners
of English. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sunderman, G., & Schwartz, A. (2008). Using cognates to investigate
cross-language competition in second language processing. TESOL

44. Works Cited (Dictionaries)
Castillo, C., & Bond, O.F. (1987). The University of Chicago Spanish-
English and Spanish-English Dictionary/Universidad de Chicago
DiccionarioInglés-EspañolyEspañol-Inglés (4th ed.). New York:
Pocket Books.
Hamel, B.H. (2004). Comprehensive bilingual dictionary of spanish false
cognates/Gran diccionariobilingue de falsos amigos del inglés (2nd
ed.). Beverly Hill, CA: Bilingual Book Press.
Rotavista, E. (2008). English-Spanish cognates lexicon/Lexco de
cognados ingles-español. Pittsburg: Red Leaf Press.
Thomas, S., Nash, R., Thomas, G., & Richmond, D. (2005). The big red
book of Spanish vocabulary. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Woods, R.D., & Stovall, M.M. (2005). Spanish-English cognates/Los
cognadosespañoles-ingleses. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America.

45. The Academic Word List
Reorganized for Spanish-
Speaking ELLs
Robert W. Bushong II
ESL Instructor
Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies
University of Central Florida
rwbushong@yahoo.com PowerPoint
Presentation
Dr. Keith S. Folse
Professor
Department of Modern Languages
University of Central Florida
keith.folse@ucf.edu
Handout
46th Annual TESOL Convention and Exhibit, Philadelphia March 29, 2012