The First Corpus-Based Persian Academic Word List:Development and Pedagogical Implications

This article generates the first Persian Academic Word List (PAWL) which comprises the most frequently used academic vocabulary in Persian academic texts. The PAWL was compiled from a corpus of 927,008 running words from academic resources. Two principles of range and frequency of word families guided the selection and arrangement of the word list. The corpus included seven books and one hundred and twelve research articles selected from 28 journals using simple random sampling. The corpus pertained to seven disciplines including Arts and Architecture, Engineering and Technology, Agriculture and Natural resources, Medical sciences, Veterinary sciences, Humanities, and Basic sciences. The established PAWL contains 539 headwords, in books and research articles under study. The PAWL may serve as an essential frame of reference and a valuable source for Persian language learners, researchers and materials planners, particularly in developing materials when the mastery of Persian academic vocabulary and literacy is an aim.