A word list generator program for using authentic texts in an academic English reading class

This paper reports on a word list generator program, which provides teachers and students support to effectively use authentic texts in an EAP reading class at the university level in Japan. The web-based program was designed to identify the distribution of vocabulary items from General Service List, Academic Word List, and JACET 8000 (4000+250) in a given authentic text, and to instantly produce a word list that contains English words from the text selected by a teacher or a student with their meanings in Japanese or English. The use of the prototype system suggests that this program can help both teachers and students estimate the difficulty level of any digitized text based on vocabulary level, and can give them flexibility to create a word list according to teaching purposes and individual students' vocabulary knowledge and needs.