Lexical profile of academic written texts produced by EFL students at the Technical University of Cotopaxi
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Abstract
Introduction. Although academic writing demands precision and sophistication, foreign language students often exhibit limitations in their productive repertoire; this highlights the need to assess their lexical competence. Objective. To determine the lexical profile of academic essays produced by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at the Technical University of Cotopaxi (UTC), Ecuador. Methodology. Using a positivist paradigm, a corpus of 43 academic essays from the Language Pedagogy program was analyzed. Utilizing digital tools (VP and AntConc), lexical diversity, density, and frequency were measured. Results. The results revealed statistically significant maturation between cohorts (d = 0.72), with increases in TTR (from 0.48 to 0.56), lexical density (from 42.1% to 46.8%), and AWL integration (from 11.5% to 18.8%). However, a marked reliance on high-frequency vocabulary persisted (81.2% in the sixth semester), falling below CEFR B2 standards (> 0.60 TTR and > 25% AWL). Conclusion. It is concluded that, although students have mastered the essay's macro-structure, they face a lexical plateau in their formal productive repertoire, necessitating a pedagogical shift toward the explicit teaching of academic collocations and lexical chunks. General field of study: Education. Specific field of study: Teacher training. Article type: Original.
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