This article provides the rationale behind the creation of the GAV. But exactly what words do university learners need to know to achieve such a level of coverage? The GAV provides one important answer to this question by combining the headwords from the three most significant long-standing corpus-based vocabulary studies to date: the University Word List (UWL), the Academic Word List (AWL), and the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) word lists, with a fourth, the New Academic Word List (NAWL), now being added. ![]() Research by Na and Nation has shown that understanding of about 95% of the words in an academic text is required for learners to confidently comprehend its meaning. This article describes the Global Academic Vocabulary (GAV) lexicon, lessons, and platform that was initially implemented at International Christian University in Tokyo and is now under significant further development at the University of Melbourne and NYU-Tokyo. One of the emphases throughout will be on considering the extent to which the new approaches and technologies considered are in the spirit of traditional language learning or should be considered a new departure. Chief among these will be the showcasing of a user-driven wiki for learners of Mandarin Chinese that is based at University College London. The paper will present a few examples of these new kinds of approach. Finally, wikis and other collaborative writing projects help to make language learning a more active and even creative activity. Secondly, there are now a wide range of apps (such as reading aids or flashcard utilities), each of which is designed to support particular aspects of the learning process. Firstly, the vast amount of user-generated content now available in many languages on the web (including video content on sites such as Youtube) on every topic under the sun can now be exploited for language learning purposes. However, the age of the internet and mobile technology is enabling the activity of language learning to be enhanced and supported in new and innovative ways. Such approaches will probably always continue to have considerable validity. ![]() ![]() Experienced language learners have always tended to work out their own strategies to maximise their effectiveness examples of this would include consciously incorporating newly learnt words and phrases in one’s own speaking and writing, reading real texts on topics that are of interest to one and learning to paraphrase so as to utilise one’s knowledge to the greatest possible effect.
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