Effects of Word Frequency on Acquisition of the Academic Vocabulary for Japanese and Chinese University Students

Abstract

Much research has revealed that frequency is one of the important criteria for selecting vocabulary from a corpus. In practice, frequency counts have been employed to provide lists of the most frequent and widely used words of a language for teaching and learning for about half a century. Since the 1980s it has been well recognized that frequency is a valuable source of empirical information that can be used to design graded courses and reading texts, and to examine the language in depth (Biber, Comad, & Reppen, 1994). Nation (1990) stated that the frequency of words occurring in texts encountered by learners was one of the important principles which influence the acquisition of vocabulary. 1\vo main approaches and factors influence vocabulary acquisition: 1) to learn new vocabulary, and 2) to access and encounter it (Ellis, 1994). In a pragmatic sense, the more we encounter the word, the more familiar we become with it. Japanese and Chinese university students are in contexts where English is a foreign language, that is, where students study English as a formal subject in school but have no immediate need for it outside of the classroom. The primary input the students receive in the language learning process is the textbook. In a certain sense, good textbooks have a great advantage of contextualizing new vocabulary items for students (Richards, 2001). Meaningful language encounters facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge, and a significant number of meaningful encounters with the target language will result in proficiency. Therefore, it is essential to explore the association between the word frequency in the textbooks used by the students and their vocabulary acquisition. JACET 4000 Basic Words (JBW) (JACET, 1993), and Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) are supposed as criteria to select the vocabulary in designing textbooks. Students' academic vocabulary knowledge is examined. The frequency information in six textbooks used by the Japanese students, and the six textbooks used by the Chinese students are counted. Association of the word frequency with the student's acquisition of the academic vocabulary is investigated using correlation and regression analysis. The differences and relationships between the frequencies in the textbooks and that in JBW and AWL are examined and measured, using I-test analysis.