Characteristic Words in a Football Magazine:

A Corpus Study for ESP Material Development

Abstract

Even though English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has recently received notable attention in English language education, ESP material development has not progressed sufficiently except in a few fields. One of the under-researched fields is ESP for sports fans. This study attempts to uncover characteristic words in a football (soccer) magazine by utilizing a corpus and to reveal the words that learners wishing to gain football-related information in English should learn. To achieve this goal, a characteristic word list from a football magazine corpus created by the authors was compared with the vocabulary list of the New JACET 8000, a norm frequency vocabulary list for English learners in Japan. Consequently, 472 characteristic words in a football magazine were identified and 169 words that readers of English football magazines in Japan are recommended to learn were determined. These words included football terms (e.g., winger), words commonly used in sports (e.g., defender), words related to winning or losing (e.g., defeat), words related to medical care and body parts (e.g., injury), transfer market words (e.g., loan), business words (e.g., partnership), and words to describe performances of teams and players (e.g., stunning).