Flowery language: Building a corpus for studying horticulture

Abstract

Research into the delivery of English language courses at the tertiary level has highlighted the need for focused, contextualised language instruction (Hyland, 2006, 2013; Bruce, 2016). Augmenting this, some studies have highlighted the need for subject-specific academic word lists (Sutarasyah, Nation, Kennedy, 1994; Martinez, Beck & Panza, 2009). Coxhead (2016) has presented on the usefulness of corpora when applied to a previously unexplored field (in terms of language teaching and learning). Similarly horticulture, given its importance to the New Zealand economy and potential for international growth is a ripe field for corpus-based investigations of language. While this study is in the preliminary stage, it aims to develop a corpus of horticulture, a frequency-based word list, and a digital vocabulary tool to aid acquisition of learning. This project seeks to inform the teaching of horticulture, guide materials design and help English language learners access the language of the horticulture industry.