A Corpus-based Study Of Vocabulary In New Standard English For Senior High School By Foreign Language Teaching And Research Press

Vocabulary learning involves learning the basic forms as well as common senses and typical patterns of words.Serving as the major source for language input,English textbooks have a vital role to play in vocabulary learning.In terms of the selection of vocabulary,it is a generally agreed principle that textbooks should first present the most frequently used words and their common senses and typical patterns to students.There are various versions of English textbooks for senior high school in China,but whether or not the selection of vocabulary in those textbooks is in line with this principle is a question yet to be answered.Therefore,studies on textbook vocabulary have gained increasing popularity.And the advent of large corpus and corpus tools has greatly boosted studies on textbook vocabulary.As previous corpus-based studies on textbook vocabulary mainly focus on the breadth of vocabulary,the present study endeavors to analyze both the breadth and depth of vocabulary in New Standard English?henceforth NSE?for senior high school published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press?henceforth FLTRP?,aiming to see whether NSE covers the most frequently used words as well as their common senses and typical patterns.The research questions to be addressed here are:?1?How well does NSE cover Basic Words??2?How well does NSE present the common senses and typical patterns of Basic Words?Basic Words here refer to all the 2570 high frequency words derived from the three word lists in the software Range?a lexical analysis software developed by Paul Nation?.The first research question has two dimensions:how many Basic Words occur in the textbooks and how many times they occur.The second research question deals with the depth of vocabulary in NSE.The reference data of this study include the three word lists in Range and the sense and pattern information in corpus-based Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(6^th edition)?henceforth LDOCE?.The first research question is answered by comparing the texts in NSE against the three word lists by Range.For research question two,first,the researcher selects 36 content words?consisting of words with multiple parts of speech,verbs,nouns and adjectives?.Then,for each sampled word,the senses and patterns occurring in the textbooks are retrieved by Antconc?a corpus retrieval tool developed by Laurence Anthony?and further compared by the researcher with the top three senses and typical patterns in LDOCE.The study shows there exist some problems in both the coverage of Basic Words and presentation of their common senses and typical patterns.The investigation finds that though 92.61%of the Basic Words?2380 words?occur in NSE,9.15%of them only occur once.The sense and pattern analysis on the sampled words finds that,for words with multiple parts of speech,NSE tends to show a preference for a certain part of speech while the other part?s?of speech is?are?completely ignored or severely under-represented.Moreover,the study also finds out that compared with concrete meanings of words,the abstract meanings are more likely to be ignored or under-represented by NSE.Meanwhile,the study suggests that for some words,the senses and patterns emphasized by NSE are not the most commonly used ones as illustrated in LDOCE.Last,the analysis also shows NSE tends to focus on written English instead of keeping a balance between written English and spoken English.The research is of both theoretical and practical significance.First,the application of corpus and corpus tools in this study can shed some new light on systematic evaluation of vocabulary in textbooks.Second,the research reveals limitations of NSE in terms of vocabulary selection,based on which some feasible suggestions are provided respectively for teachers and textbook compilers.