Academic vocabulary knowledge predicts students’ academic achievement across educational levels. English academic vocabulary knowledge is especially valuable because English is used in academia worldwide. Therefore, examining the factors that can predict English academic vocabulary knowledge can inform pedagogy, thus indirectly boosting students’ chances of academic success around the world. This study examines the extent to which cognateness, word frequency and length predict the ability of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners who have Spanish as their first language (L1) to recognise written English academic words. 38 Spanish L1 university students’ recognition knowledge of English cognates was measured via a Yes/No test containing words sampled from the most frequent 1,000 lemmas of the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner and Davies 2014). 34 participants’ data were retained in the final analysis, a multiple regression with item facility (IF) as the outcome variable and word frequency, cognateness and word length as predictors. Most of the IF variance is explained by word frequency, followed by cognateness and finally a frequency by cognateness interaction whereby word frequency is more predictive of IF for non-cognates than cognates. These findings indicate that academic cognate-word awareness raising activities can be worthwhile. Implications for research and pedagogy are discussed.

中文翻译：

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西班牙语第一级英语学习者对英语学术词汇的认知知识：同源性，词频和长度的作用

学术词汇知识可以预测学生在各个教育水平上的学习成绩。英语学术词汇知识特别有价值，因为英语在世界各地的学术界都得到使用。因此，研究可以预测英语学术词汇知识的因素可以为教学提供信息，从而间接地提高学生在世界范围内取得学术成功的机会。这项研究研究了在何种程度上，同源性，单词频率和长度可以预测英语作为西班牙语（L1）为母语的英语作为外语（EFL）学习者的能力，以识别英语学术单词。38位西班牙L1大学生对英语认知能力的认知程度通过是/否测试来衡量，该测试包含从学术词汇表中最常见的1000个词源中抽取的单词（Gardner和Davies，2014年）。在最终分析中保留了34位参与者的数据，其中多元回归以项目便利性（IF）作为结果变量，以词频，关联度和词长作为预测因子。大部分IF方差是由单词频率解释的，其次是同源性，最后是通过同源性相互作用的频率，其中单词频率对于非认知者比认知者更能预测IF。这些发现表明，提高学术上的同源词意识活动是值得的。讨论了对研究和教学法的影响。紧接着是同源性，最后是同源性相互作用产生的频率，其中单词频率比非同源性更能预测非认知者的IF。这些发现表明，提高学术上的同源词意识活动是值得的。讨论了对研究和教学法的影响。其次是同源性，最后是频率的同源性相互作用，其中单词频率比非同源性更能预测非认知者的IF。这些发现表明，提高学术上的同源词意识活动是值得的。讨论了对研究和教学法的影响。