Toward a tool for evaluating corpus-based word lists for use in English language teaching contexts

With the proliferation of large corpora and the availability of sophisticated corpus-analysis tools, the number of corpus-based word lists targeting different types of vocabulary has rapidly increased during the last 20 years. This wide variety of lists has caused problems for practitioners, for whom it is not always easy to decide which list is most useful for their purpose and context. Given the paucity of systematic guidance on how to evaluate word lists, this study aimed to construct an evaluation tool that is based on Nation's (2016) framework of critiquing word lists, but is reformulated for a different purpose and for different target users, in order to increase the applicability of information derived from corpus analysis (the word lists). Constructed based on a thorough literature review, and informed by practitioners’ views and uses of word lists, along with consultations with ELT practitioners and word list experts, the tool targets ELT practitioners such as teachers, curriculum and assessment coordinators, and materials developers involved in directing vocabulary acquisition. The tool caters to practitioners with different levels of expertise and knowledge—especially those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of developing corpus-based word lists. This paper documents the development of the initial version of the evaluation tool, as well as its first iteration, drawing upon the insights of both word list experts and practitioners in ELT.