A technicality measure for ESAP vocabulary: exploring geography

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. • We undertake a technical analysis of top high-frequency items in geography. • We describe a Modified TAM model to analyse technicality. • Significant differences between vocabulary in Physical and Human Geography. • Physical Geography has more technical vocabulary than Human Geography. • We illustrate the advantages of the analyses for teaching ESAP geography.