A technicality measure for ESAP vocabulary: exploring geography.

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Drassler, Andreja and Hyland, Ken (2026) A technicality measure for ESAP vocabulary: exploring geography. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 80 (101655). ISSN 1475-1585

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Abstract

Geography comprises two broad subfields – physical geography and human geography – which are so distinct that they essentially correspond to different branches of knowledge: sciences and arts. Since technical vocabulary varies across disciplines, this difference creates a serious challenge for students who take both courses. To investigate the variation in technicality between two subfields, corpora of geographical texts relevant to students were constructed from textbook chapters and journal articles recommended by geography professors: 659,726 words from human geography and 704,395 words of physical geography. Word lists from each corpus were extracted according to: (1) the keyness score; (2) a minimum document frequency cut-off; (3) the exclusion of proper nouns and adjectives not part of technical terms. We measured the technicality of the vocabulary in each corpus using the Technicality Analysis Model (TAM) by Ha and Hyland (2017), along with a Modified Technicality Analysis Model (MTAM) designed for this study which is less reliant on the researcher's judgements. The results show that physical geography features significantly more technical vocabulary than human geography. We discuss the implications of using technicality word lists for teaching and assessing students and for understanding Geography.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: esap,human geography,physical geography,specialised corpus,technicality,language and linguistics,education,linguistics and language ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1203
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Language in Education
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 05 May 2026 08:20
Last Modified: 05 May 2026 08:20
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102885
DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2026.101655

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