An Investigation Into Vocabulary And Exercise Design In EFL Course Books

Vocabulary acquisition, as a research focus, has been attracting increasing interest from domestic and overseas scholars and considerable achievements have been made in this field. Currently, the research focus of SL vocabulary acquisition is mainly on vocabulary learning and teaching, vocabulary usage, and vocabulary features. Yet, from my observation, seldom has any study been focused on course book compiling, vocabulary and exercise design, to be specific.Based on the teaching methodologies over the time and the framework of vocabulary teaching and learning principles proposed by Shu and Zhuang (1996), this study, through a qualitative and quantitative analysis, tries to answer the following questions: 1) What are the underneath linguistic theories and teaching concepts that have influenced the existing EFL course books and how do textbooks change to adapt to the concepts? 2) What kind of principles should the vocabulary and exercises observe and how do textbooks change to adapt to the principles?A survey on the textbooks since the 1950s indicates that course books compiled in different periods of time were influenced by the prevailing linguistic theories and teaching methodologies and a more integrated approach tends to be adopted. As far as the five principles are concerned, textbooks appear to adopt a more systematic and communicative principle in exercise designing; the application of the cultural principle has been experiencing a change; traces of cognitive principle could be found but the emotional principle has long been neglected. Nevertheless, vocabulary and exercise design has much space to improve. A more integrative approach is advised to be taken and fairer treatment needs to be given to the five approaches. The results of the study have some indications for improving vocabulary and exercise design for future teaching material compilers.