Developing EFL Vocabulary to improve Academic writing through a frequency list at the Secondary level in Sahiwal, A Pakistani English Perspective

الملخص

Vocabulary maintenance in long-term memory among EFL learners is a sustained challenge, often relying on rote memorization and random lists of English terms that do not improve  academic writing. This study is based on a tagged corpus of Dawn opinion articles for vocabulary development and writing improvement at the secondary level. The main objective of this study is to provide participants with contexual information about lexical items through a frequency list of common nouns. A mixed-method approach was used, and opinion articles comprising 1,481,863 tokens, published by various authors from 2013 to 2026, were selected as the  data sources. Twenty beginner-level EFL learners from Sahiwal participated in a pre-test and post-test with the help of a questionnaire and data were analyzed in SPSS software. After conducting tests with an experimental group using corpus-based vocabulary learning (new method) and a control group using Dawn vocabulary learning (traditional method), the control group also completed another post-test after learning the vocabulary from the corpus-based frequency list of nouns. The findings indicated significant improvement from pre-test to post-test, increased average scores, and high learner vocabulary satisfaction with the help of the contextualized noun list. Moreover, the frequency list effectively strengthened vocabulary retention through the use of AntConc and TagAnt and provided engaging learning experiences in the EFL context. Future research should involve more diverse and larger participant groups, extend the duration of teaching, and include other grammatical aspects to enable learners to write essays or paragraphs and develop proficiency in English writing.