A Corpus-based Study On The Vocabulary In China's Contemporary College English Coursebooks

It is acknowledged that college English coursebooks are of greatimportance in the formation and implementation of college Englishcurriculum and instruction in China. As for the teachers, it is impossiblefor them to prepare lessons, to explain detailed knowledge to thestudents and to evaluate the learning results of the students if theyteach without a coursebook. For the students, the coursebook will helpthem to construct the specific knowledge points, to acquire new words,to get access to cross-cultural communication abilities, to review thelearnt lessons and to prepare for the College English Tests (Band4andBand6).Although there is almost no doubt to shed some light for someserious studies on the college English coursebooks, it is surprising to findthat the related studies in China still have so many shortcomings for along time. These pitfalls include:1. the scope of the study is unclear.2.the related studies lack in-depth ones.3. the methodology adopted bymost studies lacks scientific basis and therefore unrepeatable. Based ona field investigation as plot work, this study examines four sets of majorcollege English coursebooks in China currently. By applying statisticsand corpus technology as relative scientific bases, this study discussesthe lexical constitution as well as the formation of the texts in thesecoursebooks. According to the reference wordlist and phraselistrequirement in College English Curriculum Requirement authorized bythe Bureau of Higher Education, China's Ministry of Education, this studyfinally get the complementary wordlist as well as the complementaryphraselist as the research results. These first-hand complementary listswill greatly benefit those college English teachers and students inteaching and learning in utility.The content of this study consists of the introduction, the literature review, the scope selection in the study and the compilation of thecorpus, the subject content and the form construction of differentcoursebooks, the corpus-based comparative study of lexicalconstruction as well as the conclusion and outlook for further studies.The first Chapter, i.e. the introduction part of this study, consists ofthree major subparts, namely the origin of the research, defining somecore-concepts, theoretical basis. This part of the research discusses thefollowing three points respectively:1. the importance, urgency and thepitfalls of the pervious related research from a macroscopic view.2. apreliminary scope of the research range.3. important theories andschools in SLA and general linguistics. Based on the definition of therudimentary principles that this study should follow, three specificresearch questions and research hypotheses are formed in the part4ofthis chapter. They are the basic form and content analysis, thepreliminary lexical research and the lexical coverage and lexicalrepetition.The second Chapter is the literature review. This chapter isaccomplished on the basis of the related documents in the NationalLibrary of China as well as a concentration on the more relatedresearch within this study. This part reviews different schools incoursebook writing, the college English coursebook evaluation studies,the advancement of the corpus linguistics and the related study onlexical research in college English coursebooks. The literature reviewpart adopts both the quantitative and the qualitative methods, and atlast conclude some shortcomings of the pervious studies.The third Chapter is listed some shortcomings out from the perviousstudies. This part defines the research scope and the compilation of thecorpus. In order to define the scope of the coursebook selection, a fieldstudy as a plot work was carried out in two Chinese major cities, viz,Shanghai and Xi'an, where colleges are relatively amassed, and finally selected four sets of coursebooks for this study. The compilation of thecorpus also follows a standard based on a tough criterion.The Chapter four deals with questions the pervious researcheslacked, namely the content and the form of the college Englishcoursebooks. This part is also an empirical research based on theestablished standards, and this subbranch study is carried out byapplying the methods of statistics. As a very important supplementarystudy, this part of the study will help those basic English sections oroffices in different universities to select the most appropriate materialsaccording to their own conditions. Furthermore, the study in thischapter also paves the way for further and better analysis of the latercorpus research.The Chapter five is the core of the whole thesis. By adoption of thetechnology from the corpus linguistics, the WordSmith Tools and othersoftwares such as Range are used in this study. By using bothquantitative and the qualitative methods, this part gives a scientificanalysis on the two major lexical research questions proposed inchapter three. This research had generally figured out the lexicalconstitution within the four sets of textbooks, and therefore providedfirsthand references information for those college English coursebookpublishers. It is also worth noting that the complementary wordlist as wellas the complementary phraselist from this study is directly based on theofficial College English Curriculum Requirement reference wordlist andphraselist, the complementary lists are words and phrases whichappeared in the College English Curriculum Requirement but missed indifferent sets of coursebooks. Therefore, the complementary wordlistsand the phrselist will play a good reference role for students, teachersand publishers.The last chapter is the conclusion and outlook part. It concludes thespecific findings of the study, the major contribution of the study and the shortcomings of the study. It will serve as an inspiration andenlightment for scholars who have same interests in the relatedresearch.