Abstract
Though textbooks are one of the main vocabulary input resources for domestic college students and core contents of learning and testing (Liu, 2013), few empirical studies are done to evaluate learning opportunities provided by textbooks. This empirical study is designed to analyze what learning opportunity is provided in a currently used series of textbooks of academic words, which in the present study are all from the 570-item Academic Word List (AWL) that Coxhead (2000) produces based on his self-constructed academic corpus. Through the interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative results, it was found that a favorable learning opportunity of academic words was provided in the number of academic word families appearing in the textbooks, their frequency distribution, and the word in-depth knowledge. The pedagogical implications were as follows: the occurrences of new words in the texts could be adjusted and controlled so as to ensure learners’ learning and use of them, and more attention should be paid to the collocation of words in the textbook designing process, which is vital to realize contextual richness and is conducive to acquire vocabulary.
Highlights
Academic words, called as semi-technical vocabulary or sub-technical vocabulary (Ming-Tzu & Nation, 2004), are described as those which are excluded by West’s (1953) most frequent 2000 English words but highly salient in academic texts, and of which are supportive rather than central role to the topics of the texts where they occur (Coxhead, 2000)
Through the interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative results, it was found that a favorable learning opportunity of academic words was provided in the number of academic word families appearing in the textbooks, their frequency distribution, and the word in-depth knowledge
This section is mainly about the description of internal natures of academic words in the textbook, including 1) size and proportion of academic words in the lexical frequency profile of the course books, 2) frequency distribution of academic words, and comparison between frequency of 570 academic words and its corresponding rating values as defined before and 3) word in-depth knowledge embodied by a case study of 15 randomly sampled academic words
Summary
Academic words, called as semi-technical vocabulary or sub-technical vocabulary (Ming-Tzu & Nation, 2004), are described as those which are excluded by West’s (1953) most frequent 2000 English words but highly salient in academic texts, and of which are supportive rather than central role to the topics of the texts where they occur (Coxhead, 2000). Mares (2003) posits that textbooks have a significant role on language classes and teaching goes on within them. Reda (2002) found basic English vocabulary is among widely used English textbooks This empirical study is designed to investigate academic words in a series of the New Standard of College English (NSCE, Henceafter), which is widely used among Chinese colleges and universities and learning opportunities of academic words in the vocabulary input
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