Estructura y patrones léxicos en informes escritos de estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

The following article reports on the results of a preliminary study of lexical patterning in academic reports. The study was conducted on a corpus of 163 reports written by undergraduate students. To analyse the data we apply a quantitative lexical frequency method. For the interpretation of vocabulary in use we adopt a qualitative approach and we propose a conceptually-based taxonomy that allows to link vocabulary to disciplinary contexts. Results obtained provide information to characterise the genre at this stage of literacy education. Finally, on the basis of this new contextually-oriented taxonomy, it is concluded that the presence of technical vocabulary, in its restricted sense, is linked to the nature of the object of study of each discipline rather than to the level of specialisation achieved by the students writers of the reports, which is more adequately accounted for by the use of everyday conceptually refined terminology according to each specialised context.