El l�xico especializado como expresi�n de la competencia discursiva acad�mica en ensayos producidos por j�venes escolarizados en una clase de literatura

Abstract

The present study gives evidence about the use of specialized lexicon in academic writing as a feature of discursive competence, since academic skills include the knowledge and use of topic-related vocabulary to communicate and interact with others in school context. The purpose of this study was to identify the repertoire and the extent of usage of specialized terms used by a group of students through the exam of the nouns in their texts, and relate them to the rates given by expert judges to establish if specialized lexicon is valued as an expression of academic discursive competence. The repertoire was extracted from 120 texts produced by students of a private high school in central Mexico in their Spanish and Literature class. Tests of variance were conducted over the texts sample to find differences according to their rates. The results show that, in fact, the curricular subject in which the writing task was carried out provides a specialized lexical input that is adopted by the students in their texts, and that the greater this repertoire is and the more it is used, they are better valued by experts. These findings open a window to the exploration of didactic possibilities to promote the acquisition of disciplinary vocabulary as an important feature of academic competence.