Development of Maritime English Word List: Comparing Vocabulary of IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases and Spoken BNC 2014

Abstract

In studies of ESP word lists, little attention has been paid to the establishment of a word list of Maritime English. This study developed a Maritime English Word List (MEWL) by using Keyword List function of AntConc, comparing word frequency lists of IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases and Spoken BNC 2014. Based on the analysis using Someya (2006) ’s Word Level Checker, referring to JACET8000 as a reference word list, each of 350 keywords in MEWL is classified into nine difficulty levels. The classification indicates that about half of the keywords should be learned by maritime students before high school graduation, and the rest of the words should be acquired after they enter the institutions for maritime education. It is also shown that 91 keywords of MEWL are excluded from the difficulty levels of JACET8000, and they need to be reclassified by other practical standards.