<em>Mastering appropriate writing style is one of the challenges frequently experienced by novice student writers entering higher education. Developing academic writing skills is, however, crucial for students new to academic settings since written assignments constitute the main form of assessment in tertiary education. Novice student writers thus need to acquire the writing conventions used in academic settings to achieve success in high-stakes assessment. Underlying success in academic writing is the usage of academic vocabulary regarded as a key feature of academic writing style. Through textual analysis accompanied by interview data utilising the ‘talk around text’ technique, this corpus-based case study reports on the deployment of academic vocabulary in four genres of assessed academic writing produced by one international foundation-level student at a UK university. The findings reveal a small number of newly acquired academic vocabulary items deployed in each written assignment with all new academic words having been acquired from reading materials. In addition, the important role that the topic and genre play in student written production becomes apparent. These findings have potentially important pedagogical implication for contexts catering for novice student writers entering tertiary education, such as foundation programmes or pre-sessional courses.</em>

Despite extensive research into academic vocabulary in university student writing, little is known about academic vocabulary in international foundation-level students’ assessed academic writing. Considering that academic vocabulary is regarded as a key element of academic writing style and written assignments are one of the main forms of assessment in university contexts, this is an important omission. This study addresses this gap by employing a corpus-based approach to investigate the development of academic vocabulary in assessed academic writing produced by international students (N=193) in a foundation(gateway) programme over an academic year in the context of a British university based in England and its overseas campuses in the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius. The findings show an increase in the usage of academic vocabulary over the course of the foundation programme and highlight the impact of the assignment topic and brief.

Vocabulary learning is unarguably one of the sub-goals in every language classroom. The learning and teaching of vocabulary have been transformed by the development of general word lists, providing compilations of the most prevalent vocabulary items used in everyday contexts. These lists have made an invaluable contribution to the field of applied linguistics in terms of both research and pedagogy; they have assisted the learning, teaching and testing of vocabulary; and they have also been widely used in materials development and vocabulary research. However, if they are to be utilised effectively, it is important to understand the characteristics of these word lists. Thus, this article offers a review of the various general word lists presently available with the aim of assisting English as a Foreign Language (EFL)/English as a Second Language (ESL) practitioners in making informed decisions regarding the choice and utility of these word lists in their practices.