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MEASURING SPOKEN VOCABULARY LOAD ON MEDICAL ENGLISH STUDENTS: A

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 Rudy, M., D. Kristina, & S.S. Tarjana (2019). Measuring
spoken vocabulary load on medical English
students: A learner corpus evaluation. International
Online Journal of Education and Teaching
(IOJET), 6(4). 774-787
http://iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/595

Received: 31.12.2018
Received in revised form: 20.06.2019
Accepted: 23.09.2019

MEASURING SPOKEN VOCABULARY LOAD ON MEDICAL ENGLISH STUDENTS:

A LEARNER CORPUS EVALUATION
Research Article
Muhammad Rudy
Malahayati University
[email protected]

Diah Kristina
Sebelas Maret University
[email protected]

Sri Samiati Tarjana

Sebelas Maret University
[email protected]

Muhammad Rudy is a lecturer of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at Malahayati University,
Indonesia. His research interest includes English in Medicine and its teaching methodology as
well as teaching technology.
Diah Kristina is an Associate Professor of English Department of Cultural Science Faculty of
Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia.
Sri Samiati Tarjana is a Professor of English Department of Cultural Science Faculty of Sebelas
Maret University, Indonesia.

Copyright by Informascope. Material published and so copyrighted may not be published

elsewhere without the written permission of IOJET.
 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2019, 6(4), 774-787

MEASURING SPOKEN VOCABULARY LOAD ON MEDICAL ENGLISH

STUDENTS: A LEARNER CORPUS EVALUATION

Muhammad Rudy
[email protected]

Diah Kristina
[email protected]

Sri Samiati Tarjana

[email protected]

Abstract
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching urges the students to have a deep understanding
of specific vocabularies. Specifically, in medical English class, spoken diagnosis explanation
involves specific vocabularies. This corpus study was aimed to reflect the students’ achievement
of spoken vocabulary during speaking practice on explaining the diagnosis. Computer software
was utilized to calculate frequency and range of words. The students’ vocabularies were
compared with listening tapescript corpora from a medical English textbook to evaluate
vocabulary pattern. Additionally, the students' spoken corpora were contrasted with 2000 high-
frequency words and other three word lists to assess word distribution. This study revealed that
medical students used few specialized vocabularies in order to deliver their explicable message
to the patient. The analysis of students’ vocabulary can be used as a reference to contemplate the
success of language instruction and future betterment, particularly spoken diagnosis explanation
at medical English program.
Keywords: corpus; ESP; evaluation; medical English; spoken diagnosis

1. Introduction
Medical English is one of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) branches that has its own
needs on the teaching instruction and materials. Richards (2017) argues that some practical
concerns should be considered in designing ESP program, one of them is material preparation.
Further, he recommends vocabulary selection as the basis for expressing meaning in a language.
One of the best ways to do vocabulary selection for language teaching is corpus analysis. He
explains that corpus analysis can select the highest frequency words that are considered most
useful aspect in the instruction.
In line with Richards, Nation (2001) states that the breadth or size of vocabulary knowledge is
the number of words of learners. He also agrees that vocabulary acquisition is crucial since it is
considered as the basic yet important component in language learning. The nation also divides
the vocabulary into four levels, namely high-frequency words, academic vocabulary, technical
vocabulary, and low-frequency words. The division clarifies that certain words need more
attention as they may function for different purposes.

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For a long time, English Language Teaching (ELT) has considered vocabulary as an
important part. As O’Keeffee, McCarthy and Carter (2007) state that one of the efficient
procedures to observe vocabulary is through the corpus. They explain that corpus can provide
not only linguistic phenomena but also pedagogical implication. Before instruction, the material
can be designed by analyzing needed language features while at the end of the process, the
corpus can be a reflective instrument to evaluate achievement.
In addition, Knight (1994) mentions that vocabulary knowledge is the most important facet of
the second language (L2) learning. Vocabulary target is set at the initial time of material design.
In the process of teaching and learning, teachers can start their activities with vocabulary
understanding first. At the end of the session, vocabulary is commonly used as a standard to
evaluate students' achievement. Thus, this study tried to shed light on the assessment of
vocabulary load of medical students as part of teaching evaluation.
Research to evaluate lexical coverage and spoken medical English class is considered to be
great importance, especially related to the students' medical professionalism in the future.
Applying corpus, this study tries to investigate vocabulary coverage in a classroom context.
Textbook vocabularies and four-word lists were set as the threshold to count vocabularies load of
the students. Thus, the researchers formulated the research questions as follows:
• What are the words in the textbook which students are likely to use?
• How many of 2000 high-frequency words found on students' speaking during
explaining diagnosis?
• How many words are produced by the students does not belong to 2000 high-
frequency words?
2. Theoretical Framework
2.1 Vocabulary Thresholds
West (1953) creates General Service List (GSL) containing 2000 most common English
vocabularies that can help learners to communicate comprehensively. This list has been widely
used by many countries as a framework to develop good teaching material in English (Richards,
2017). Later, GSL is revised by the NGSL (Browne, 2013) which is claimed as a better word list
with bigger coverage, mainly because NGSL was created with advanced corpus device and big
size data. Unfortunately, NGSL has not been built in the computer software used in the present
research. As a consequence, GSL becomes the standard of this study since it has been set as a
base word list at the computer in this study.
In ELT curriculum and material development, corpus studies have been used to measure
vocabulary load as a success indicator of textbook creation. Mukundan and Aziz (2009)
compared words occurrence in five Malaysian English textbooks used in schools and GSL by
West (1953). They found that, out of five, there is no single book that fully applies the whole
2000 most frequent words. 71.9% of words are overused in the textbooks as indicated by seven
times and more repetition. These findings can be a reflection for the material designer to revise
the textbooks to meet the entire GSL.
In accordance with the previous research, Zarifi and Mukundan (2015) evaluated one of the
linguistic aspects presented in Malaysian English as Second Language (ESL) secondary school
textbook. By utilizing Wordsmith software and Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, they tried to
contrast phrasal verbs found in the textbooks and what are presented on the dictionary. Their
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 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2019, 6(4), 774-787

research becomes a recommendation for future material designer in developing an ideal textbook
since some phrasal verbs such as take away is overlooked. They regret that take away is not
elaborated well in the textbook meanwhile it is very sensible in daily use of language such as in
fast food restaurant.
Recently, corpora basis can be used to assess standardized test items. Beng and Keong (2017)
examined lexical bundles in an English reading test for varsity. They investigate lexical bundles
in reading test for five disciplines; applied science, pure science, business, humanities and social
sciences. They found that different lexical bundles are employed in different disciplines and
genres, for instance, research-oriented bundles tend to appear more on applied science while
social sciences have a more dependent clause. For consideration, teaching students to familiar
with subject-related element can help the development of better tests.
As an addition, Zorluel Özer and Okan (2018) contrast discourse markers produced by
English teachers. They compared two Turkish teachers and two native teachers to find that
Turkish teachers used fewer discourse markers than native teachers. They argued that the
Turkish teacher did not use some important discourse markers in which the native teachers
utilized them frequently. As an implication, they suggested the nonnative teachers exposed with
discourse markers to gain authentic language use. The training and understanding of the
importance of discourse markers can be begun from the level of the pre-service teacher. The last,
exposing teaching material with a discourse marker can benefit nonnative teacher to be common
with discourse marker.
Students’ work corpora for evaluating learning achievement have been built by Khojasteh,
Shokrpour and Torabiardakani (2017). They try to overview English modals use among 136
advanced Iranian learners. The students’ narrative writings from six English institutions are
gathered. They calculate 429 times modals occurrences. It is surprising that one of the modals,
shall, did not appear (0%) in the corpus. In other hand, some dominating modals such as can,
will and could are overused by students. The phenomena bring them to a conclusion that students
employe avoiding strategy during writing in order to conceal their incompetence of modals use.
They conclude that the use of modals in the students’ writing do not show their language use in
natural English. Accordingly, teaching various modal types with numerous samples and
repetition is highly recommended.
As the emergence of English as an academic language, Coxhead (2000) tries to bring a
solution by proposing Academic Word List (AWL). She classified 570 most frequent academic
words taken from the various academic text. In practice, AWL assists students in university-level
to understand academic text like journal and textbook. Moreover, English for Academic
Purposes (EAP) programs are benefited by AWL in designing their material.
To ease the writing process of students from Hotel and Management Faculty in Malaysia,
M.Nordin, Stapa and Darus (2013) built specialized word list related to the culinary course. They
compiled 116 lecturing PowerPoint materials to result 3,698 running words. They employed
RANGE and FREQUENCY software (Heatley, Nation and Coxhead, 2002) in finding 113
selected vocabularies for food writing. These specific vocabularies benefit ESP teachers in
designing teaching materials because the objective of writing instruction is concentrated on
subject-related words.
In the other fields of ESP, such as engineering, agriculture and business, word list becomes a
serious concern. Martinez, Beck and Panza (2009) initiated agriculture academic domain.

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Rudy, Kristina & Tarjana

Konstantakis (2007) and Hsu (2011) work for English for Business Purposes (EBP). Coxhead
and Hirsh (2007) presented their Science-specific Word List. In Engineering, Hsu (2014)
developed English Engineering Word List (EEWL) with the assistance of corpus software.
In English for Medical Purposes (EMP), word lists are developed extensively. Medical
Academic Word List (MAWL) is developed by Wang, Liang and Ge (2008). They identified 623
medical words which used in several journals. These words are very valuable for medical
learners who want to read and write academic papers. Afterward, Lei and Liu (2016) revised it
into New Medical Academic Word List (NMAWL) which is created from bigger corpora and
listed in the lemma. Lei and Liu (2016) presented their NMAWL together with part of speech
symbols like a for adjective and v for the verb.
It is, therefore, very important to identify specific word list for specific learners, as ESP
learners need to focus on their subject which is different from general English learners. A certain
field of a study sometimes contains the very wide specific subject. As suggested by Lei and Liu
(2016) related to medical English, EMP consists of very broad knowledge in one subject,
designing more specific word list areas will help medical learners deepen their interest. In the
Medical English class, students are trained to have good performance in speaking skills. One of
the speaking components, vocabulary, is used as a good communication indicator. Lexical
coverage of the students should be evaluated in order to understand the success of Medical
English program.
This study was done in the Indonesian context where English is considered as Foreign
Language (FL). Medical English (ME) program is taught in the university level to prepare
medical students to be capable of communicating through spoken and written English with
foreign patients. As the program run in Malahayati University-Bandar Lampung, ME is done for
two semesters with two credits each. Spoken skills that must be mastered by medical students
include taking history, examining patient, giving reference, making diagnosis and giving
treatment (Glendinning and Holmstrom, 2001).
3. Method
3.1. Participants
This study was done on an intensive class which consisting of nine female students. They
took intensive class of Medical English because they did not meet the regular schedule offered
by Language Center (LC) of Malahayati University, Bandar Lampung. They were medical
students on sixth semester taking Medical English (ME) Level Two. One of the focuses in the
instruction was explaining diagnosis both in spoken and written.
Those students had followed general English training in the same institution in the previous
semesters, from first until the fourth semester. On the semester five, they took ME level one with
concentration on taking history and patient examination. Both levels tried to integrate three
English skills; listening, speaking, and reading, the writing was limited. In this study, language
background of students, mother language (L1) or local language was denied since they used
Indonesian language for daily conversation in the class.
Before this study done, the students had gotten some training about explaining a diagnosis
which involves listening activity, role play, and reading materials. Explaining diagnosis belonged
to last section of the textbook together with treatment part because it follows the structure of
general practitioners daily chores, started with interviewing patient and ended with medication.
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 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2019, 6(4), 774-787

By this situation, it can be inferred that students had adequate EMP exposure and practice
especially explaining diagnosis orally based on guidelines in the textbook.
3.2. Data Elicitation
The students were asked to prepare their diagnosis based on medical case in their textbook
page 65 to 75 (Glendinning and Holmstrom, 2001). The students were allowed to choose any
medical case they were familiar with. This democratic assignment was done in order to trigger
students’ speaking performance. They chose an easy topic they would be cope with vocabulary.
As a consequence, there were varieties of topics explained by the students.
The students were provided forty-five minutes to design their individual speaking
performance. After that, they were asked to do a role play with the teacher. The teacher acted as
patient and the students were doctors. During their speaking practice the students were requested
to speak close to voice recorder. Each student was allowed to speak for one until five minutes
time allocation. Then, their voices were carefully transcribed for further data processing, non-
distinguish sounds were not proceeded. Meanwhile, tapescripts from textbook were retyped.
3.3. Learner Corpus
In term of data size, O'Keeffe et al (2007) categorize small and large corpus. A written corpus
is considered as quite small when it contains below five million words. On the contrary, the
spoken corpus is categorized as large with more than a million words. This study contains more
than a thousand words of students' spoken corpora because it was done only in a classroom
setting. Hence, it can be said this is a mini corpus yet worth to bring factual image concerning
vocabulary achievement.
The researchers created simple corpus to contrast students’ corpora and textbook corpora. The
students’ corpora contained 1,505 running words which proportion is elaborated on Table 1. On
the other hand, the textbook corpora was made of 954 running words which was taken from tape
scripts especially about explaining diagnosis on textbook from page 106 – 108 (Glendinning and
Holmstrom, 2001). Both corpora were not combined in order to distinguish students’ creation
and textbook.
Table 1. Number of Words Produced by Medical English Students
Excerpt Running Words
Students
…it is possible Mr X suffering vascular dementia… 115
1
…It can be investigated such as cholesterol LDL… 67
2
..You might not know you have it until you… 108
3
…And now I want to tell you about my diagnosis… 120
4
…you had complained that you got headache on… 162
5
Good evening Mr. Hudson my name is Dewi…. 257
6
… Okay you never go to doctor before… 188
7
…You must take rest okay?... 143
8
… Hundred ninety per one hundred ten mmHg… 345
9
1,505
Total

All corpora were processed by using RANGE and FREQUENCY Programs created by
Heatley et al (2002). The software proceeds vocabulary in txt file format. RANGE was used to

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compare vocabulary up to 32 different texts at the same time. It provides a range or distribution
figure, headword frequency figure, family frequency figure, and frequency figure for each of the
texts the word occurs in. The program has 2000 high-frequency words (West, 1953) and 570
AWL (Coxhead, 2000) features. Those word lists were set as base words that can be used as
comparison standard.
FREQUENCY program analyzes word occurrence based on its hit on the text. It can only run
one text at a time. The output can be listed in alphabetical or frequency order. The txt output file
presents rank of the words, raw frequency and cumulative percentage frequency. A side by side
frequency tables can be contrasted by utilizing FREQUENCY output.
Ahead of RANGE analysis, some words from students’ transcription were eliminated. The
elimination was done on name, both doctor and patient name. Numbers, such as age, time and
single numbers, were retyped in English. The selected words were saved in txt format. The
reduction is called stop list.
3.4. Data Processing and Analysis
In order to evaluate vocabularies that have been achieved by students after learning process,
the contrasting process was done on corpora of students and textbook through FREQUENCY
program. The contrasting process was done by creating frequency list on both corpora. The
frequency lists were contrasted side by side to find students’ words that occur in the textbook.
Words were categorized into content and function words (Gerot and Wignell, 1995). The
division comes out with assumption that function word which is close to grammatical aspect had
been covered when the students in general English class (in semester one to four). Therefore,
content word was focused in this study.
From the frequency contrast, the researchers found some words that should not be analyzed
further. The words are authentically related to local context such as name of students or patients,
name of hospital, name of city, borrowing, and coinage words. Names which were not included
in analysis were Putri, Nicol, Hudson, Jameson and Wulandari. Hospital name is Bintang Amin.
The area names were Bandar Lampung and Kemiling. The rests were UGD, khas, formly,
anamnetion and obstained. In the RANGE program those fifteen words were set as stop list
words, which meant not counted in analysis.
On the other hand, words that relate to medical terms, disease and abbreviation were allowed.
The examples are thrombocyte, aedes aegypti, osteoporosis, hypothyroidism, MRI (Magnetic
Resonance Imaging), X-Ray, CT Scan, etc. Those words were included in RANGE analysis
because the students have been common with them either in EMP class or in other lecture
classes.
Subsequently, knowing the distribution of student words in the textbook, students’ words
were contrasted with GSL (West, 1953). The contrast was aimed to see coverage of their
vocabularies in the 2000 high frequency words. Subsequently, the words that did not belong to
GSL were contrasted to 570 AWL (Coxhead, 2000). On the final stage, words that did not
belong to either GSL or AWL were matched with MAWL (Wang et al, 2008) and NMAWL (Lei
and Liu, 2016) word lists. The GSL and AWL contrast was done in once by using RANGE.
While matching non GSL and AWL words with MAWL and NMAWL was done by searching
the words manually with find menu on txt file.

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 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2019, 6(4), 774-787

4. Results
4.1. Classroom Spoken Diagnosis Word List
The mini corpus from spoken diagnosis done by ME students results 396 word types. The
word you places the highest position with 83 frequency and word yes on the last list with only
one frequency as mentioned on Appendices 1 and 2. On the other hand, corpora from tape script
generates 378 word types with words the and yourself place the top and bottom rank, 46 and 1
frequency respectively. The word types from student source vary more than from tape script. The
twenty most frequent words can be seen on Table 2:
Table 2. First Twenty Words List of Textbook and Student

Textbook Student

Word Form Rank Frequency Word Form Rank Frequency

THE 1 46 YOU 1 83

AND 2 33 AND 2 63

A 3 28 YOUR 3 46

YOUR 4 28 IS 4 39

TO 5 24 THE 5 38

OF 6 23 TO 6 31

IS 7 21 OF 7 30

IT 8 20 A 8 23

YOU 9 20 HAVE 9 23

IN 10 16 I 10 21

I 11 15 NOT 11 21

NOT 12 11 THAT 12 20

THIS 13 11 OKAY 13 19

WITH 14 11 HEADACHE 14 17

THAT 15 9 THIS 15 17

CONDITION 16 8 DO 16 16

WHEN 17 8 IT 17 14

WHICH 18 8 MIGRAINE 18 14

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Rudy, Kristina & Tarjana

AN 19 7 ALSO 19 13

HIS 20 7 ARE 20 13

The above table shows that there were thirteen words that occur as similar words, even though
they had different frequency on each list. The similar words were a, and, I, is, it, not, of, that,
the, this, to, you and your. Those thirteen words were commonly uttered both by tapescript and
students. However, the domain rank of the two lists do not show identical position, except the
word and. With lower running words number on textbook list, and occurred thirty-three times
compared with sixty three times occurrence on students' spoken diagnosis. It shows that and is
significant on both word lists.
Dissimilar words on both lists were an condition, his, in, when, which and with from tape
script corpora. Whilst, the students’ spoken diagnosis has also, are, do, have, headache,
migraine and okay. In these differences, it can be seen that the symptoms or diseases that are
commonly mentioned during explaining diagnosis are headache and migraine. Those two words
listed in the most twenty words uttered by the students because some students use similar
medical case. It is confirmed by the name of patient they stated.
Further, the frequency list from students and textbook were contrasted. The process was done
with side by side analysis, the frequency tables were put together in one page. The contrasting
shows that there were 126 word types that identically appeared on both tables as can be seen on
Appendix 1. The frequency of words available on both columns were 768 (51% of total student
words) and 573 (58% from text book).
Among the list of words, there appear on student and textbook, they had 35 similar function
word types; A, an, can, I, is, me, etc. In the list of words appear on students and textbook, the
frequency of function words were 538 (70%) and 373 (65%), consecutively. While the content
words from students were 230 (30%) and 200 (35%) from textbook. It was too hurry if we
conclude function words dominate students and textbook corpora by denying the words that do
not have similar appearance on the frequency.
Moving to the list of dissimilar words on students and textbook, it can be seen that there were
271-word types from students and 251 types from the textbook. Among the number, there were
only six-word types (2%) containing function words in students' corpora. While the textbook had
only four (1.5%) word types of function words. It seems that content words dominate list of
dissimilar words from students and textbook corpora.
4.2. Students Words vs. Established Word Lists
In order to find a better comparison, the students' spoken vocabularies were compared with
well-constructed word lists; GSL, AWL, MAWL and NMAWL. The comparison of the first two
word lists was done by using RANGE program. 2000 high-frequency words were the first
analysis stage. The words that did not appear on GSL were moved to next contrast stage,
matched with AWL. The final comparison, the words that did match neither GSL nor AWL, will
be looked up on MAWL and NMAWL. By doing so, the words produced by students can be
assessed on coverage.

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 International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2019, 6(4), 774-787

The result of RANGE analysis showed that among 1,505 running words; 1,294 words occur
in GSL (86%), 23 (1.5%) words in AWL, and 188 (12.5%) words not found in those three lists.
The following table depicts RANGE analysis output.
Table 3. Students Words Found in GSL and AWL
Token (%) Type (%)
Word List
1,294 (86%) 301 (76.2%)
GSL
23 (1.5%) 14 (4.3%)
AWL
188 (12.5%) 17 (19.5%)
Not in GSL and AWL
1,505 395
Total

Word types created by students are 395. They occur in GSL and AWL for 301 (76.2%) and 14
(4.3%) types respectively. Meanwhile, out of 188 words which were not categorized in GSL and
AWL formed 17 (19.5%) word types. Later, the 17 word types will be matched with MAWL and
NMAWL.
The coverage of students' words towards 2000 high-frequency words only 301 (15%) types. It
is very far from the expected numbers as mentioned by Nation (1990) in Mukundan and Aziz
(2009) that the GSL covers 87% vocabulary in a text. Comparing 15% and 87% seems the
students are not successful.
The second comparison was students' corpus and AWL. There are only 23 out of 1,505 words
(1.5%) produced in academic way. The actual word type was only 17 out of 395 (4.3%) shown
by Table 4. The small number of flowery words created by students indicates that they prefer
high-frequency words to scholarly stylistic words.
Table 4. Words Found in AWL

NO TYPE RANGE FREQ F1

1 ACCOMPANIED 1 1 1

2 CONDUCT 1 1 1

3 DATA 1 1 1

4 DEPRESSION 1 1 1

5 FUNCTION 1 2 2

6 INVESTIGATED 1 1 1

7 INVESTIGATION 1 2 2

8 MINIMAL 1 1 1

9 NORMAL 1 5 5

10 OCCUR 1 1 1

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Rudy, Kristina & Tarjana

11 PHYSICAL 1 1 1

12 PLUS 1 1 1

13 SECTION 1 1 1

14 STABLE 1 1 1

15 STYLE 1 1 1

16 TRIGGER 1 1 1

17 TRIGGERED 1 1 1

The last comparison was done at words which were not found in GSL and AWL. There were
188 words which distributed into 77 words types. Due to the elimination of fifteen words which
is mentioned on previous part, the word types which were put on not found neither in GSL nor
AWL were only 62 as presented on Appendix 3.
Scanning the table in Appendix 3, it is obvious that, the words which were not found neither
in GSL nor AWL were dominated by medical terms. The words such as Aedes aegypti,
densitometer, extremities, hypertension and osteocalcium are the words which are familiar in
medical world. Those words relate to health examination and diseases. Medical students are
skillful to talk and read about these terminologies in their lecturing or every day conversation.
Even though the words were not found both neither in GSL nor AWL, the students are proficient
to use them. This fact leads the researchers to compare the 62 word types with MAWL and
NMAWL which are well known as established medical word lists.
In accordance to MAWL which consists of 623 words, the researchers found only fourteen
words consisting twelve equal words and two derivational words. The twelve duplicate words
from Appendix 3 are alcohol, calcium, density, diagnose, diet, hypertension, protein, routine,
scan, symptom, vascular and vital. While two other words are in the form of singular and verb
presented in MAWL but they are presented in plural and noun on students corpora, drug to be
drugs and prescribe to be prescription.
There is a slight difference when 62 words were contrasted with NMAWL. With 16 words
(15 identical and 1 derivational) found in NMAWL list, this comparison falls in very short apart.
The fifteen similar words are density, diabetes, diagnose, diagnosis, diet, hypertension, nerve,
prescription, protein, scan, symptom, urine, vascular and vitamin. The only one derivational is
drug which is presented in NMAWL as plural word, drugs.
5. Discussion
To get general insight, we can see total frequency combination of content and function words
from both similar and dissimilar words from students and textbook. In the textbook word list,
there were 385 function words (39.5%) and 591 content words (60.5%). The textbook was out-
numbered by content words. Meanwhile, students word list, out of 1,505 running words, there
are 564 function words and 941 content words. With 62% proportion, content words were
prominent on student's corpora. The student's corpus agrees with textbooks, the content words

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were higher than function words. As a final decision on evaluation by considering the
similarities, students were successful in achieving vocabulary target.
Related to low coverage of students on 2000 high-frequency words, Richards (2008) argues
that one of the spoken language characters is repetition. It is acceptable that the students, the
candidate of medical doctors, use similar words during spoken communication. They performed
fixed procedure or pattern on explaining the diagnosis. Even though they create 1,294 words in
GSL the students tend to utter similar words with high frequency, see Appendix 1. Repetition of
usual words happens on spoken diagnosis.
Richards (2008) states that spoken language tends to use generic words, it is supported by
Fauziati (2016) who indicates participants of a discourse influence the language use. That
medical English students prefer daily lexical in explaining diagnosis is an attempt to bring
understanding to the patient. They avoid misinterpretation by leaving difficult words.
It is very understandable that non GSL and AWL words from students were very rare in
MAWL and NMAWL because MAWL and NMAWL are deal with reading and writing
academic article (Wang et al, 2008; Lei and Liu, 2016). Moreover, in the process of constructing
both list Wang et al and Lei and Liu eliminated several words from GSL and AWL.
Nonetheless, Mukundan and Aziz (2009) set seven times word repetition as the standard of
good frequency words in a textbook. Applying the use of seven times occurrence in students
speaking, though it is not proper, there are only three words out of 62 (4.8%) that meet the
criteria. The words are headache 17 times, migraine 14 times and okay 19 times.
Both headache and migraine, with total 31 frequency, denoted common symptoms that met in
daily. While Okay, with the highest frequency of the all 62 words, commonly used in spoken
language to show agreement or back channels as indicated by Gerot and Wignell (1995).
Medical students who pretend as real medical doctor tried to ask confirmation to patient to agree
with or an effort for doctor to start new topic. Thus, the word is used frequently in conversation.
Heng and Abdullah (2013) emphasize that “who speaks what language to whom and when”
are the keys of language use. The medical students who chose to use more common words than
sophisticated words try to get successful explanation during informing diagnosis. Patients are
people who have less knowledge on medical terms or scholarly medical words, doctors need to
prefer tranquil lexical to contribute understandable diagnosis.
6. Conclusions
Using corpus software analysis on evaluating spoken language in EMP classroom brings
better insight on vocabularies load as part of assessing performance skill. The composition
spoken diagnosis words on medical English students are not outlying from what the textbook has
as shown by similarities on students and textbook corpora. Both students and tape script textbook
are dominated by content words in numbers. However, the words produced by students mostly
fall into 2000 high frequency words characterized by big repetition on some word types.
Interestingly, students do not use sophisticated language in explaining their diagnosis to the
patient. Students of medical English program tend to avoid academic words to get a
straightforward understanding for patients. Looking at medical specific words, there are few
medical terms that they use during speaking to patient. Students, as candidate of medical doctors
overuse common words and exclamation to have smooth conversation with patients. Overall,

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general English words benefit patient and doctor communication for the sake of comprehension
of the messages.
The small number of data size becomes flaw on this corpus study. The small number of word
types found on 2000 high frequency words can be caused by lack of data number. The future
researchers are suggested to use bigger running words to get reflection of medical spoken
phenomena. Nevertheless, generalization of this study can be used as foundation to measure
success of EMP program related to vocabulary coverage.
Teachers of English program, especially medical English, are suggested to calculate
vocabulary load among their students in order to identify classroom strength and weakness,
vocabulary achievement. After knowing condition of students’ corpora, teachers can design
viable strategies and materials for successful instruction. It is recommended that medical
students are exposed with GSL words that represent characteristic of spoken language.
Explaining diagnosis that needs more daily vocabularies should be supported with vocabulary
training. One of teaching technique that can be utilized is repetition of words as suggested by
experts, at least seven times repetition.
Acknowledgements
The researchers would like to profoundly express their gratitude to Paul Nation, Averil
Coxhead and Heatley for the free RANGE and FREQUENCY Programs as essential instrument
in this research.

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