A CORPUS-VOCABULARY ANALYSIS OF GRADE 9 ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS IN SWEDEN

Abstract

Title: A Corpus-Vocabulary Analysis of Grade 9 English Textbooks in Sweden Author: Dianne Valize Garcia Supervisor: Vi Thanh Son

Abstract: The importance of vocabulary in language acquisition is undeniable. Since textbooks play a vital role in learning a language as a subject in school, this paper investigates the vocabulary content of grade nine English textbooks in Sweden. This corpus examination is concerned with what word types are found from the samples based on Nation’s (2013) theory, the academic words by Coxhead (2000) and the pedagogical reflections of the vocabulary to school syllabus and learning goals. The results show that the books contain around 40,000 – 44,000 tokens and 2,000 - 2,700 word families which are mainly the high-frequency words. Concerning the academic words, less than 3% of words in the book belong to the Academic World List. With these results, the books cover the most common words in English or the high-frequency words, which are very helpful in communication and which equip the learner to be a B1 or B2 user based on CEFR level; but the low input of academic vocabulary implies insufficient preparation for reading academic texts.