Vocabulary of reading materials in English and French L2 textbooks: A cross-lingual corpus study

Abstract

Foreign language (L2) textbooks and specifically the reading materials they are constructed around constitute an essential source of input for learners. However, many questions remain about the lexical characteristics of L2 textbook reading materials. This study assesses (1) their vocabulary demands by means of vocabulary loads, (2) the representation of higher- and lower-frequency words, and (3) the extent to which words are repurposed across texts. A corpus was compiled containing the reading materials from three English and three French textbook series used across all six grades of Flemish secondary education to determine whether widely observed differences in learners’ out-of-school exposure (which is high for English but low for French) somehow impact the lexical characteristics of the materials. To analyse the corpus, a custom lexical profiling system was built in Python. Results show (1) a fairly consistent build-up in vocabulary loads in the English materials but not in the French materials, (2) the absence of 20–30% of the 5000 most frequent words (flemmas) in the English and French materials, respectively, and (3) limited potential in both L2s for reencountering words across texts, with ca. 50% of all introduced lexical items being used exclusively in one text.