123 CLAC 88: 123-133 How much and what kind of vocabulary do marine engineers need for adequate comprehension of ship instruction books and manuals? Zorica Đurović 1 ; Milica Vuković-Stamatović 2 ; Miroslav Vukičević 3 Received: 18 September 2019 / Accepted: 30 January 2021 Abstract. Considering the importance of adequate understanding of instruction books and manuals on board vessels all over the world, as well as the challenges it imposes to the English language teachers and course designers, this paper aims to answer important research questions in relation to the quantity and type of vocabulary required for their adequate reading comprehension. In this study we use the method of Lexical Frequency Profling and the software developed by Anthony Laurence – AntWordProfler 1.4.0w. The corpus is comprised of 1,769,821 running words obtained from instruction books and manuals of various ship and machinery types. The results of this study point to the high technicality and lexical demand of the corpus, which calls for a highly technical English courses’ design and further research in marine engineering (English) vocabulary. Additionally, the research fndings point to the need of creating a marine engineering-specifc word list. Keywords: vocabulary; lexical profling; English for Marine Engineering Purposes (EMEP); instruction books and manuals. Cómo citar: Đurović, Z., Vuković-Stamatović, M., Vukičević, M. (2021). How much and what kind of vocabulary do marine engineers need for adequate comprehension of ship instruction books and manuals?. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 88, 123-133, https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/clac.78300 Índice. 1. Introduction. 2. Theoretical background. 2.1. English for Maritime Purposes and English for Marine Engineers Purposes. 3. Vocabulary level and reading comprehension. 4. Word lists. 4.1. General Service List(s). 4.2. Academic Word List. 4.3 Engineering word lists. 5. Research questions. 6. Corpus and methodology. 6.1. Corpus details. 6.2. Methodology. 7. Results. 7.1. How much high- frequency general-purpose and academic vocabulary is used in marine engineering instruction books and manuals? 7.2. How much general engineering vocabulary is used in marine engineering instruction books and manuals? 7.3. How many words are needed to read marine engineering instruction books and manuals at an adequate level? 8. Pedagogical implications. 9. Limitations of the study. 10. Conclusion. References. 1. Introduction Technical manuals are an essential part of shipboard equipment and are of vital importance to ship operators. Al- though pieces of equipment may originate from all over the world, virtually all of them have an English version of the technical manual, which is commonly the most widely used and referred to. In addition to more or less simple ev- eryday conversation and dealing with uniform forms and documents, everyday job requirements of marine engineers also include having to read and use numerous and rather demanding instruction books and manuals related to various ship’s systems, both in terms of technical knowledge and English vocabulary. This is of particular signifcance since instruction books are especially consulted in case of errors, failures, breakdowns or emergency, when consulting an instruction book or manual should be as quick and effcient as possible. Moreover, reading technical manuals is also the main means of detailed familiarisation with particular ship’s systems once a marine engineer signs on to a new vessel. Bearing all this in mind, it is crucially important that marine engineers who are non-native to English are able to read them at an adequate level of reading comprehension without outside assistance. As knowledge vocabulary is generally considered a strong predictor of reading comprehension, in this paper we set out to explore the lexical profle of this genre, with the goal to determine how much and what type of vocabulary prospective and practitioning marine engineers need for reading ship instruction books and manuals. 1 University of Montenegro, Faculty of Maritime Studies Kotor, E-mail: zoricag@ucg.ac.me ORCID: 0000-0002-8668-0005 2 University of Montenegro, Faculty of Philology, E-mail: vmilica@ucg.ac.me ORCID: 0000-0001-5497-1361 3 University of Montenegro, Faculty of Maritime Studies Kotor, E-mail: miroslav.v@ucg.ac.me ORCID: 0000-0002-9930-5650 ARTÍCULOS Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación ISSN: 1576-4737 https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/clac.78300