EAP teachers and course designers usually assume that learners have already mastered the most frequent words of general language before entering their courses. Therefore, they focus on words that are outside high-frequency vocabulary but common in academic written English. This fixed vocabulary benchmark is questionable given EAP learners’ varied language proficiency. A good understanding of academic spoken English is certainly important for students’ academic success. Concentrating only on academic written vocabulary for comprehending academic spoken English may therefore be problematic. No attempts have been made to address these issues in a single study. This study compared the occurrences of high-frequency words in academic spoken and written English. It also tested EAP learners’ receptive knowledge of these words. Results showed that high-frequency words play a very important part in academic spoken English, but most participants failed to master them receptively. Suggestions for enhancing EAP learners’ knowledge of high-frequency words are provided.

中文翻译：

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学术英语口语中的高频词：语料库和学习者

EAP老师和课程设计者通常认为，学习者在进入课程之前已经掌握了通用语言中最常用的单词。因此，他们侧重于高频词汇之外但在学术书面英语中很常见的单词。鉴于EAP学习者的语言水平各异，这种固定的词汇基准值得怀疑。对学术英语口语的良好理解对学生的学术成功当然很重要。因此，仅专注于学术书面词汇以理解学术英语口语可能会出现问题。尚未尝试在单个研究中解决这些问题。这项研究比较了英语口语和书面语中高频单词的出现。它还测试了EAP学习者对这些单词的接受程度。结果表明，高频单词在学术英语口语中起着非常重要的作用，但大多数参与者对它们的理解能力不足。提供了一些建议，以增强EAP学习者对高频单词的了解。