A Corpus-based Study Of The Application Of Vocabulary In Senior School Textbooks: A Schema Theory Perspective

Schema can be described as a system of organizing and perceiving newinformation. The schema theory emphasises the interaction between the existingschemata with new schemata, namely, new knowledge. Vocabulary acquisition is notonly a simple process of input and output, but a process of assimilation and adaptation,which is an enlightment for choosing and arranging English textbook vocabulary insenior high schools. In the process of English learning, the acquisition of commonlyused words helps learners to build a wider and richer language schema and improvethe efficiency of English learning. In addition, vocabulary acquisition does not meanknowing its meaning in isolation. It should be an acquisition of language chunks, suchas semantic meanings, collocations, and grammatical patterns, namely, theconstruction of the whole schemata of vocabulary. Whether the textbook vocabularyis arranged reasonably can be reflected by the commonly used vocabulary and theusage of vocabulary chunks.This research will focus on vocabulary in high school English textbooks.Taking schema theory as the foundation and using corpus as the research method, thisstudy will contrast the vocabulary of two most popular versions of high schoolEnglish textbooks (the first version is the New Senior English for China, short forNSEFC, which is published by the People’s Education Press and the second version isthe Senior High English, short for SHE, which is published by Beijing NormalUniversity Press). The selected reference wordlists come from the basic words of thelexical analysis software Range, which is developed by New Zealand linguist PaulNation. The research mainly adopts the lexical meanings, and grammatical patterns inLongman Dictionary of Contemporary English, short for LDOCE, as the analyticalbasis. It is compiled primarily grounded on a large corpus, and the typical grammarsand lexical collocations of100highest frequency words in Scott Thornbury’s NaturalGrammar. The100words are extracted from BOE, a large corpus with hundreds ofmillions of words. The research concerns whether or not the textbooks covervocabulary most commonly used by native English speakers and whether the actualusage of these high frequency words is presented in high school English textbooks.The research concern can be divided into two problems: firstly, how well the Englishtextbooks cover the most commonly used vocabulary and the curriculum basicvocabulary in high school English syllabus issued by the Ministry of Education of China; secondly, whether or not these most commonly used words in the high schoolEnglish textbooks are presented with the most commonly used word meanings andtypical usages. The study finds that both the NSEFC and the SHE encompass thebasic vocabulary well. However, the NSEFC shows a steady growing trend of thebasic words’ cohesion distribution, while that of SHE does not grow steadily. Inregard to the distribution of the curriculum vocabulary according to the survey, theNSEFC vocabulary is more in accordance with the curriculum vocabulary; while theSHE adds a lot of super-class vocabulary to ensure a good coverage of curriculumvocabulary. It shows that the basic vocabulary distribution in the NSEFC moreaccords with the cognitive development principles of the schema theory, which isfrom simple to complex and progressiveness. In other words, the input and difficultyof vocabulary gradually increase with an increase in the language level. As for thein-depth survey of textbook words, first of all, there is a lack in the presentation of themeanings and typical grammatical patterns of the commonly used words in bothversions of textbooks. In addition, commonly used meanings and typical grammaticalpatterns of low frequency words are less than those of high frequency words. Besides,the presentation of the abstract meanings of content words is relatively inadequate.The result shows that both textbook versions have deficiencies in the construction ofthe whole schemata of vocabulary.As for the significance of this research, the basic word coverage and commonlyused meaning and typical grammatical patterns of the high frequency content words intwo versions of high school English textbooks are discussed based on the schematheory. The research reveals deficiencies in the textbook editing in terms ofvocabulary selection and the usage of commonly used meanings and typicalgrammatical patterns of commonly used words. The thesis also offers some feasiblemethods and suggestions for textbook editors in the choice and arrangement ofvocabulary and for teachers in vocabulary teaching. Moreover, this study fullyhighlights the role of corpus-based research method in the textbook evaluation anddesign, and English teaching.