A Corpus-Based Comparative Study Of Vocabulary In Primary School English Textbooks Of Yilin Edition And PEP Edition

Vocabulary is generally considered as an extremely important part in the textbook. This thesis aims to conduct a corpus-based comparative study of vocabulary in English of Yilin edition and English of PEP edition.The research questions to be addressed in this thesis are as follows:1) Are there any differences between English (PEP Edition) and English (Yilin Edition) in the coverage of vocabulary in English Curriculum Standards? If yes, what are they?2) Are there any differences between English (PEP Edition) and English (Yilin Edition) in the distribution of vocabulary in each volume? If yes, what are they?The corpus-based approach is adopted in the study. The corpora involved in the study are self-built—Yilin.txt and PEP.txt. Two kinds of tools are employed—Range and Wordsmith Tools 5.0. Range is used to compare the vocabulary in the two sets of textbooks against the base word list from English Curriculum Standard (2011). The purpose is to check the textbooks’coverage of vocabulary in English Curriculum Standards (2011). With WordList in Wordsmith Tools 5.0, we can check the distribution of vocabulary in each volume of the two sets of the textbooks.Detailed analysis yields the following findings:Firstly, in spite of the slight differences in the total number of tokens (24959 tokens in the Yilin Edition and 21849 tokens in the PEP Edition), the two sets of English textbooks are quite similar in their coverage of the vocabulary in English Curriculum Standards (2011). About half of the types (48.3% in the Yilin Edition and 49.78% in the PEP Edition) are not in the base word list from English Curriculum Standards, but these types do no occur frequently in the English textbooks, since their tokens account for only a small part (19.11% in Yilin Edition and 20.4% in PEP Edition) of the total tokens. Most of the tokens in the textbooks (80.89% in Yilin Edition and 79.6% in PEP Edition) conform to the vocabulary requirements in English Curriculum Standards (2011).Secondly, there are both similarities and differences between the two sets of textbooks in their distribution of vocabulary in different volumes. The two sets of textbooks both manifest a general tendency of increase in types and in STTR (Standardized Type/Token Ration) from 3 A to 6B. The rise in types is gradual and steady between the two textbooks for the same grades (e.g. between 4A and 4B), but relatively rapid and sudden between the textbooks for different grades (e.g. between 4B and 5A). Their differences are as follows. As far as types in each volume are concerned, first, in the PEP Edition, there is a quite sharp decrease of 144 types in 6B; second, in the PEP Edition, except for in 6B, there are more types in each volume than in the volumes of Yilin Edition; third, the increase between different grades in English (PEP Edition) is not as rapid and abrupt as that in English (Yilin Edition). As far as STTR is concerned, first, the STTR of 3A (PEP Edition) (23.7%) is much higher than that of 3A (Yilin Edition) (18%); second, in PEP Edition, there is a very slight drop in the STTR of 4B (from 22.45% in 4A to 22.33% in 4B) and a sudden increase in the STTR of 5A (from 22.33% in 4B to 28.03% in 5A), and in Yilin Edition, there is a sudden increase in the STTR of 4A (from 20.2% in 3B to 25.6% in 4A) and a slight drop in the STTR of 6B (from 27.95% in 6A to 26.94% in 6B). All in all, the two sets of textbooks seem to have their respective advantages and disadvantages in the distribution of vocabulary.In light of the findings, this paper discusses some pedagogical implications both for teachers and textbook compilers. This research can help teachers to make a better use of the vocabulary in the two sets of textbooks and to learn the approaches of evaluating textbooks in an objective way. For textbook compilers, it will help them improve, effectively and efficiently, the compilation of vocabulary in the textbooks.The study inevitably has some limitations. First, those vocabularies in the textbooks which are not required in English Curriculum Standards are not discussed in detail in this thesis. Next the present research only studies vocabulary in two sets of textbooks due to time limit and shortage of other textbooks.