Sustaining vocabulary knowledge growth through corpus-generated lists of lexical bundles and keywords in the law of contracts
Non-native English-speaking law students and international legal practitioners who speak English as an additional language face significant challenges while pursuing legal studies at English-only institutions, participating in professional training or catering to the legal needs of an increasingly diverse clientele. One of the most difficult challenges is sustaining adequate lexical knowledge to initiate and maintain communication regarding legal subject matter. This study aims to address this issue by presenting two short lists of lexical bundles and keywords (KWs) of the Law of Contracts. Through a combination of corpus analysis and linguistics methodology, these lists are designed to provide a pedagogically useful and subject-focused source for learning academic vocabulary. Bundles are functionally classified into referentials, discourse organisers and stance markers, and their structural forms are filtered into distinct nominal, prepositional and verbal categories. KWs are POS-tagged to allow for direct instructional intervention. This research discusses the pedagogical implications of the research for teaching English for legal purposes.
Research on lexical bundles (LBs) has explored various academic domains; however, the field of psychology has received comparatively less attention. This study aims to address this gap by…
Despite extensive research on the selection of lexical bundles for learning purposes in a wide range of academic disciplines, written legal discourse remains relatively underexplored.
Non-native English-speaking law students and international legal practitioners who speak English as an additional language face significant challenges while pursuing legal studies at English-only…