Lexical Sophistication and Academic Writing Proficiency: Insights from Chinese, German, and Belgian EFL Learners

Mbarek, Asmae
(2025)

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Details

Supervisors
Meunier, Fanny
Faculty
Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres
Degree label
Master [120] en linguistique, à finalité spécialisée: Linguistics and its Applications for a Multilingual Society
Abstract
Your thesis explores how students from China, Germany, and Belgium use advanced academic vocabulary in English writing. It focuses on lexical sophistication, especially low-frequency academic words, and how this varies depending on learners’ first language (L1) and educational background. Using 150 essays from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and analyzing them with the TAALES tool, the study finds that Belgian students show the highest lexical sophistication, followed by Chinese, while German students score lowest. The results suggest that educational context and writing instruction play a bigger role than linguistic similarity to English. The thesis recommends targeted teaching of academic vocabulary and genre-based writing to support EFL learners more effectively.