Academic Word Families in Online English Dictionaries

Abstract

The concept of the word family has been widely employed in research on vocabulary in the teaching and learning of foreign and second languages. The underlying assumption being that once learners know one member of a word family, they can recognise other members. Empirical research supports this vis-à-vis receptive knowledge of inflectionally related wordforms. However, studies of academic writing indicate that using appropriate derivative forms of a known word is challenging, suggesting a need for dictionaries with morphological support for writers. Traditionally, in paper-based dictionaries, this need could not be fulfilled due, in part, to space constraints. This study aims to establish if it is met in five online English dictionary websites. It analyses the treatment of seventy-four academic wordforms which academic writers have been shown to have difficulty deriving when presented with the related base word. Results indicate good coverage of the derivative forms across the dictionary websites examined but inconsistency within and between resources in the way in which forms are treated. Differences include the status as entries or subentries and the provision of writing support features such as examples, grammar patterns, and collocation information. Finally, changes to the treatment of derivatives to better serve academic writers are suggested. Keywords: academic writing, derivative forms, lexicography, morphology, online dictionaries, vocabulary acquisition, word families, writing support