A Corpus-based Study Of Vocabulary In Textbooks For Senior High School

Vocabulary plays a vitally important role in second language learning.It sustains pronunciation and grammar,being the cornerstone for language learning.In China,textbook serves as the main source of language input for high school students.Therefore,it is of high significance for researchers to investigate the presentation of vocabulary in textbooks so as to find out whether textbooks have provided students with the most commonly used words and their common definitions as well as collocations.In the late 2019,the new English textbooks for senior high by People’s Education Press(PEP)was published.This series of textbooks are compiled under the guidance of National English Curriculum Standard(NECS)(2017 version).Therefore,it is of high value to investigate the presentation of vocabulary of the new textbooks.This study,based on Nation’s framework of vocabulary knowledge and Krashen’s Input Hypothesis,combined with corpus instruments such as Antconc and Range,conducts an in-depth analysis on the breadth and depth of vocabulary of the newly published three compulsory English textbooks.Based on previous studies in this filed,this study aims to answer these three questions:(1)How well does the vocabulary in the new textbooks cover Basic Words in Range?(2)How well does the vocabulary in the new textbooks cover the vocabulary list presented in NECS(2017version)?(3)How well do the new textbooks present the knowledge of the depth of vocabulary?The results show that firstly,the comparison between vocabulary in textbooks and three basic word lists in Range reflects that the new textbooks have presented the great majority of the word tokens in Range,with up to 98.87% of word tokens in new textbooks covered by Range and that the new textbooks have presented 95.2%,75.72% of the 1000 most frequently used word families and 1000 the second most frequently used word families in Range respectively.However,they fail to present a great variety of derived forms and inflected forms of words.Secondly,the coverage rate between the vocabulary in textbooks and the vocabulary recommended in NECS(2017 version)is quite satisfactory since 90.38%of the words in NECS(2017 version)are presented in textbooks,implying that the new textbooks are compiled strictly in accordance with the requirements of the curriculum standards in terms of vocabulary selection.However,detailed analyses on the missing words reveal that among the 193 missing words,many of them are commonly used in daily life,and the new textbooks fail to present them.For the third question,the analyses of 31 sampled words reveal that except for adjectives,the new textbooks have more or less problems in presenting common definitions and collocations of verbs,nouns,and words with multiple parts-of-speech.First of all,for words with multiple parts-of-speech,the new textbooks only focus on the first common definition and collocation,completely ignoring other important ones.Secondly,although the new textbook has tried it best to present as many common definitions and usages of verbs as possible,there are still some deficiencies.Finally,compared with the presentation of verbs,the presentation of nouns is better;however,some of the commonly used definitions of nouns are also ignored.Accordingly,this study suggests that for textbook compilers,some large corpora can be used as references while selecting vocabulary so as to improve the comprehensiveness and the objectiveness of vocabulary presentation.Besides,to improve the deficiencies in the new textbooks much more attention should be paid to the NECS(2017 version)while selecting vocabulary.Finally,for the front-line teachers,this study suggests that while teaching vocabulary,teachers can explicitly introduce some derived and infected forms of words to students or they can creatively teach some word-formation rules to make up for the deficiencies of the vocabulary presentation in the new textbooks.