Constructing and Validating a Biotechnology Academic Word List: Corpus Analysis and ESP Classroom Application

Abstract

Research on discipline-specific word lists has been conducted across a range of fields, including medicine, nursing, and chemistry. However, biotechnology remains underexplored. This study aimed to (1) construct a Biotechnology Academic Word List (BAWL), (2) evaluate its representativeness based on a biotechnology academic corpus, and (3) examine its pedagogical value in an ESP classroom. A 3.8-million-token Biotechnology Academic Journal Corpus (BAJC) was compiled from peer-reviewed articles. Following established exclusion principles, high-frequency items from the General Service List (GSL) and New General Service List (NGSL) were removed, resulting in a list of 124 biotechnology-specific headwords. A subset of 30 BAWL items was integrated into an eight-week ESP course with Thai graduate learners. Results showed that the BAWL provided relevant and representative coverage of biotechnology discourse and offered preliminary evidence of vocabulary gains in a small-scale pilot implementation, while learners also reported positive perceptions of its usefulness.