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Six-minute vocabulary.

From BBC LearningEnglish.com

Hello and welcome to six-minute vocabulary. I'm Neil and...

I'm Finn.

Today's programme is all about academic English.

If you are going to study or you are studying at an English-speaking university,

you might be wondering how you'll cope with understanding lectures and academic texts.

Oh, and writing essays.

Yes, academic English is different to the English people speak and write every day.

It's more formal and uses higher-level words. So, in today's program, we'll give you ideas

for understanding words and phrases that you'll come across. And some advice for writing essays

and giving presentations. We'll also give you tips for studying in English.

But first, let's look at three main features of academic English.

Difficult English vocabulary, specialist subject vocabulary,

and language for organising essays and presentations. Now, when you come across

a word you don't know in an academic text or lecture, you can try to guess its meaning by looking

at the context. Or by seeing if the word looks like a word in your own language. This is a

particularly useful strategy. If your

own language has lots of words from Greek or Latin, as many of the words used in academic English

come from those languages. Words, for example, like microscopic, which means tiny, or analysis,

which means study. Or regeneration, which means renewal.

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