AN EXAMINATION OF VOCABULARY PRESENTATION IN TEXTBOOK “NEW ENGLISH 9”

The second objectivewas to examine the vocabulary exercises in the textbooks with the aims ofidentification of the dimensions involved in the vocabulary activities included in thetwo tex

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

-LE THI THU NGOC

AN EXAMINATION OF VOCABULARY

PRESENTATION IN TEXTBOOK “NEW ENGLISH 9”

Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

Code: 60 14 01 11 MASTER’ S THESIS IN EDUCATION

SUPERVISOR:

Le Van Canh, Prof

Nghe An, 2017

Textbooks are important tools to develop the lexical competence of Englishforeign language learners However teachers and researchers have paid littleattention to the language input contained in textbooks, particularly as far as therepresentation of lexical knowledge and knowledge dimensions in vocabularyactivities are concerned This study examined two sets of nationally published newtextbooks TIENG ANH 9 (Books 1 and 2) provide the major lexical input for ESLstudents in classrooms, which were being piloted and planned to be introducedofficially in 2018 in secondary schools in Vietnam The research intended toinvestigate how vocabularys is presented in the new textbooks and to clarify howlexis is treated through analyzing exercises from the textbooks Lexical FrequencyProfile and Lexical Variation were used to explore the lexical coverage of thetextbook title Results have shown that the textbook users are exposed to areasonably adequate exposure of the low frequency words The second objectivewas to examine the vocabulary exercises in the textbooks with the aims ofidentification of the dimensions involved in the vocabulary activities included in thetwo textbooks and ascertaining whether there were differences in the distribution ofvocabulary knowledge dimensions in two textbooks of the same grade Resultsshow that the distribution of vocabulary knowledge dimensions is a high degree ofsimilarity between both books Nevertheless, differences could also be observed

between TA9 -1 and TA9-2 in the number of vocabulary activities Although both

textbooks are used at the same level, the close analysis of their vocabulary activitiesreveals differences, which may give rise to differences in learners’ lexicalacquisition and output

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisorAssoc.Prof Dr Le Van Canh who I believe is the most wonderful supervisor, forhis valuable direction, keen insight, precious orientation, continuous support, expertguidance, and patience throughout the study.Assoc.Prof.Le Van Canh provided mewith assistance at every stage of the process and invaluable feedback and guidance,which turned this demanding process into a smooth and enjoyable one He alwaysexpressed his faith in me

I am also grateful to my board of managers and colleagues in Thanh HoaProvincial Continuing Education Centre for their on-going support andencouragement throughout the study Without that, it would have been harder for

me to finish the project

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my former colleagues atDong Tien Secondary school for her continuous encouragement, cooperationand help throughout the study

I wish to express my deep appreciation to the members of the MA CHK23Class of 2015 -2017 for their friendship and support throughout the whole process.for her continuous encouragement and help throughout the study

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family, without their love, help,

understanding, and encouragement it would have been impossible to complete theprogram

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background and rationale 1

1.2 The aims of the study 1

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 The structure of the thesis 2

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 What is vocabulary ? 3

2.2 The role of vocabulary in second language learning 4

2.3 Vocabulary knowledge 5

2.3.1 Vocabulary size 6

2.3.2 Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge 8

2.3.3 Depth of vocabulary knowledge 9

2.4 Vocabulary learning from second language acquisition theories 9

2.4.1 The learning of vocabulary from a cognitive perspective 10

2.4.2 Frequency and vocabulary learning 12

2.4.3 Nature of vocabulary acquisition: the importance of repetition 14

2.4.4 Direct and Indirect Approaches to Vocabulary Learning 15

2.4.5 Vocabulary input in textbooks 16

2.5 Previous studies on vocabulary presented in ELT textbooks 17

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 20

3.1 Textbook “New English 9” 20

3.2 Research method 22

3.2.1 Content analysis 23

3.2.2 Corpus-based method 24

3.3 Research questions 24

3.4 Data analysis 25

3.5 Research tools 25

3.5.1 Vocabulary Profile (VP) 26

3.6 Framework of vocabulary knowledge dimensions 28

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS 30

4.1 Findings relating to the vocabulary types 30

4.1.1 Lexical frequency profile and text coverage 30

4.1.2 Lexical variation 34

4.1.3 Distribution of new words and new words occurring frequency 35

4.2 Findings relating to the vocabulary exercises 39

4.2.1 Types of vocabulary exercises 39

4.2.2 The coverage of lexical knowledge 41

4.2.3 Comparison of the two textbooks 47

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION 50

5.1 Vocabulary knowledge presented in the textbooks 50

5.1.1 Tokens occurring in textbooks 50

5.1.2 Word types occurring in textbooks 51

5.1.3 Vocabulary variety 51

5.1.4 Word frequency, vocabulary size and text coverage 52

5.1.5 The repetition of new words 54

5.2 Vocabulary activities presented in the textbooks 55

5.2.1 The differences and similarities of vocabulary presentation in the two textbooks 55

5.2.2 The dimensions emphasized in each textbook 56

5.2.2.1 The pronunciation 56

5.2.2.2 The context- dependency of word senses 57

5.2.2.3 The design 58

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 60

6.1 Summary of the major findings of the study 60

6.2 Pedagogical implications for teachers 62

6.2.1 Criteria of evaluating or choosing textbooks 62

6.2.2 Information for teaching decisions 63

6.3 Limitations and recommendations for future study 63

6.4 Concluding remarks 64

REFERENCES 65

APPENDIX 1 68

APPENDIX 2 70

APPENDIX 3 72

APPENDIX 4 74

APPENDIX 5 76

APPENDIX 6 78

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BAVE The Business Alliance for Vietnamese Education

GSL General Service List of English Words

OCR Optical character recognition

MOET Ministry of Education and Training

STTR Standardised type/token ratio

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Vocabulary Size and Text Coverage of Written Discourse

Table 3.1 An example of a word list table of Tiếng Anh 9 - Book 1( TA9-1) Table 3.2 Vocabulary knowledge dimensions (adapted from Jiménez Catalán(2002:155)

Table 4.1 The distribution of words in the textbooks Tiếng Anh 9 Book 1,Tiếng Anh 9 Book 2 and Tiếng Anh 9 Books 1+2

Table 4.2 Comparison of tokens in TA9-1 and TA9-2

Table 4.3 Comparison of token coverage in textbooks

Table 4.4 Lexical variation of textbooks by three levels

Table 4.5 Cumulative percentage of new word occurrence in TA9-1 and TA9-2textbooks in term of occurring frequency produced by Range

Table 4.6 Distribution of new words in TA9 in term of occurring frequency produced by Range

Table 4.7 Lexical variation of textbooks by three levels produced by RangeTable 4.8 Frequency of vocabulary exercise types

Table 4.9 Distribution of vocabulary activities per unit in TA9-1

Table 4.10 Distribution of vocabulary activities per unit in TA9-2

Table 4.11 Vocabulary knowledge dimensions in the vocabulary activities ofTA9-1

Table 4.12 Vocabulary knowledge dimensions in the vocabulary activities ofTA9-2

Table 4.13 Comparision of vocabulary activities in TA9-1& TA9-2 andPercentage of vocab activities in TA9

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background and rationale

Vocabulary learning is central to language acquisition, no matter thelanguage is first,second, or foreign As McCarthy (1990: viii) noted in hisintroduction, “no matter how well the students learn grammar, no matter howsuccessfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range

of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”

If grammar is like the skeleton of a language, vocabulary is like the flesh Withoutwords, the building blocks, communication and understanding cannot be achieved.Vocabulary learning is, therefore, one of the specific goals in a language classroom.Given the important role of vocabulary in learning English as a foreignlanguage, it is very important to investigate how vocabulary is presented in textbooks and to clarify how lexis is treated through analyzing exercises fromauthorized textbooks used for students This is because in many contexts, textbooksare also the syllabus and serve as an important source of lexical input Theassessment of EFL textbooks has attracted the attention of language teachers andresearchers since the 1980s, but most of the studies used the corpus-based approach

to identify the number of words presented in the textbook The new TIENG ANHtextbook for high schools students in Vietnam is being piloted but it seems that noattention is given to vocabulary This is the motivation behind the study reported inthis thesis, whose focus is on how vocabulary is treated in the TIENG ANH 9 ( atextbook for grade 9 students), which is planned to be in use soon after the pilotingtime

1.2 The aims of the study

The aim of this study is to ascertain the opportunities for vocabulary learningoffered to students by the new textbook TIENG ANH 9 (Books 1 and 2), whichwere being piloted and planned to be introduced officially in 2018, from the point ofview of the frequency of lexical items and repetitive activities focused on

vocabulary To achieve this aim a content analysis technique was adopted.

1.3 Research questions

In order to achieve the above aim, the study was designed to answer thefollowing questions:

1 What kind of vocabulary words are high school students exposed to and expected

to master in the new TIENG ANH 9 textbook?

2 How words are distributed and recycled and what dimensions of lexical knowledge are covered in the researched textbooks?

3 What types of exercises are dominant in the researched textbooks ? How adequate are these vocabulary exercises types to the development of students’ lexical knowledge?

In seeking the answers to these research questions, the following issues are

examined: (1) the distribution of lexical items per Range, in order to determine

whether such a distribution is appropriate to the goal of the course; (2) thestandardised type/token ratio (STTR) so as to find out the average amount ofopportunities for lexical input (and repetition) offered; (3) the amount of lexicalexercise types included and its adequacy to the students’ ;earning potential ; and (4)the amount of repetitive practice activities or exercises included in order to supportvocabulary learning

1.4 The structure of the thesis

The thesis is composed of six chapters Chapter One introduces thebackground of vocabulary teaching and learning in Vietnamese secondary schoolsand outlines the objective of the study Chapter Two provides a review of therelevant literature, which prepares for the design of the study and providingbackground information on the research questions Chapter Three introduces thetextbooks analyzed and explains the methodology used in the study Chapter Fourpresents the findings of the analysis Chapter Five highlights and discusses theresults Finally Chapter Six concludes by summarizing the research, stating thecontribution, the limitations and recommendations in the study

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 What is vocabulary ?

Research in the field of vocabulary learning has been scarce until recently;even more so in the field of vocabulary teaching The situation seems to bechanging in the last two or three decades, and a few studies have already engaged inthe analysis of textbooks from the point of view of their lexical component.Research and publications by Nation (2001) have been decisive for promotingstudies on vocabulary and textbook teaching Milton (2009) published a thoroughand comprehensive study on vocabulary acquisition in which, among other issues,

he discusses the role of textbooks for teaching and learning vocabulary We call theattention on two groups of studies Firstly, those studies centred on the actualamount of vocabulary and vocabulary coverage in teaching materials Some ofthose studies examine the associative relationship of two factors as well, textbookvocabulary and teacher’s lexical production - his/her oral input in the classroom -with students’ vocabulary gains The second group consists of those studies focused

on the rate of vocabulary learning

Language researchers have given many different definitions of vocabulary.Each linguist gives his own definition of vocabulary Vocabulary is central toEnglish language teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannotunderstand others or express their own ideas Wilkins, a famous British linguist,emphasized this with his saying "without grammar, very little can be conveyed,without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed "(1972, p.11) Most people think thatvocabulary is considered as words of a language with the reason that vocabularydoes deal with words Yet vocabulary is much more than just single words It will

be likely to learn that vocabulary includes lexical chunks , phrases of two or morewords Phrases like these which are known as single lexical units involving a clear ,formulaic usage and making up a significant portion of spoken or written Englishlanguage usage, are called formulaic sequences ( Alali & Schmitt,2012) Ur (1996:

60) defined vocabulary “as the words we teach in the foreign language However, anew item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound of two orthree words or multi-word idioms” Ur’s definition is adopted in this study becausethe definition is more relevant to the pedagogical purposes

Regarding the role of vocabulary, Pyles and Algeo (1970) claimed that

“when most of us think about language we think first about words It is true that thevocabulary is the focus of language It is in words that sounds and meaningsinterlock to allow us to communicate with one another, and it is words that wearrange together to make sentences, conversation and discourse of all kinds” (p 96).The issue of the role of vocabulary will be discussed further in the subsequentsection

2.2 The role of vocabulary in second language learning.

Words are the building blocks of language and without them there is nolanguage A learner of a foreign language can neither speak fluently and accurately,write easily nor understand what he reads or hears if he or she doesn’t have enoughvocabulary and have a communicative competence Vocabulary is central to Englishlanguage teaching because without sufficient vocabulary students cannot understandothers, convey their intended meanings or label objects, actions and express theirown ideas Word knowledge is a necessary part of communicative competence(Seal, 1991), and it is important for both production and comprehension in a foreignlanguage

It is essential to gaining proficiency in the students’ target language bydeveloping a solid vocabulary Nowadays, Linguistics have recognized thetremendous importance of helping language learners to develop an extensivevocabulary Vocabulary itself is multi-faceted involving spelling, pronunciation,and grammatical behavior Develop myriad techniques for teaching vocabulary sothat students remain engaged and multiple learner types are reached Currentresearch suggests that visual techniques are extremely effective for vocabularyacquisition, with modern multimedia technologies providing teachers with a range

of options for presentation (including many authentic materials that wouldotherwise be unavailable) The use of multimedia is helpful for both the students’comprehension and retention processes, as visual memory is extremely powerful.However, because of this, educators must pay careful attention to craft apedagogical strategy that readily incorporates the development of auditory skills aswell Furthermore, the quality of tasks selected directly reflects the depth ofcognition for the learners This connection is significant, for the higher thecognition level, the more meaningful the outcome In order to maximize vocabularydevelopment, teachers should utilize activities that require students to employcontext and students’ background knowledge so that they engage more deeply withthe material As students’ knowledge of the target languages progresses, it isimperative to initiate comprehension checks to ensure that students are retaininginformation and can properly apply it Overall, second language instructors shouldconsider vocabulary an integral part of language acquisition and work to build acreative and continually evolving repertoire of classroom techniques.

2.3 Vocabulary knowledge.

In recent decades, vocabulary researchers have proposed various definitions

of vocabulary knowledge and complementary frameworks of it Most researchersagree that lexical knowledge is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but involvesdegrees of knowledge They regard it should be constructed as a continuum, orcontinua, consisting of several levels and dimensions of knowledge Much of what

is written on word knowledge goes back to the well-known vocabulary knowledgeframework of Richards (1976) He identified seven aspects of word knowledge (e.g.syntactic behavior, associations, semantic value, different meanings, underlyingform and derivations) Nation (1990) distinguished eight types of word knowledge(e.g form, grammatical pattern, meaning, function, relation with other words),which were specified both for receptive and productive knowledge Chapelle (1998)argued that a trait definition of vocabulary should contain four dimensions:vocabulary size, knowledge of word characteristics, lexicon organization, and

processes of lexical access Henriksen (1999) proposed three separate but relatedvocabulary dimensions: a “partial-precise knowledge” dimension, a “depth ofknowledge” dimension, and a “receptive-productive” dimension Qian’s (2002)recent framework, developed on the collective strength of earlier models ofvocabulary knowledge proposed that vocabulary knowledge comprises fourintrinsically connected dimensions: vocabulary size, depth of vocabularyknowledge, lexical organization, and automaticity of receptive–productiveknowledge The importance of various factors in these dimensions will varyaccording to the specific purpose of language use In all the frameworks reviewed,there is a clear consensus that vocabulary knowledge should at least comprise twodimensions, which are vocabulary size: breadth and depth, or quality and quantity

of vocabulary knowledge Vocabulary breadth- quantity of vocabulary refers to thenumber of words the meaning of which a learner has at least some superficialknowledge Depth of vocabulary knowledge – quality of vocabulary is defined as alearner’s level knowledge of various aspects of a given word, or how well thelearner knows this word

2.3.1 Vocabulary size

English probably contains the greatest number of words of any majorlanguage, which makes learning a sufficient amount of its vocabulary a formidabletask With out of the 54,000 or so word families appearing in Webster’s Third NewInternational Dictionary (1961), even educated native speakers will know only afraction, perhaps up to around 20,000 word families (Goulden, Nation, &Read.1990) Although this is probably an unrealistic figure for all but the mostmotivated learners, it is a good news for learners that they can function in Englishwith vocabularies far smaller than this We know that in order to participate in basiceveryday oral communication, English learners may get the lexical resource of themost frequent 2,000-3,000 word families (Adolphs & Schmitt,2003; Schonell etal.,1956) The vocabulary in the 2,000-3,000 frequency band provides additionalmaterial for spoken discourse, but additionally, knowledge of around 3,000 families

is the threshold that should allow learners to begin to read authentic texts Mostresearch indicates that knowledge of the most frequent 5,000 word families shouldprovide enough vocabulary to enable learners to read authentic texts Of course,many words will still be unknown, but this level of knowledge should allowlearners to infer the meaning of many of the novel words from context and tounderstand most of the communicative content of the text Second language learnerswith a knowledge of the most frequent 10,000 word families in English can beconsidered to have a wide vocabulary, and Hazenburg and Hulstijn (1996) foundthat a vocabulary of this magnitude may be required to cope with the challenges ofuniversity study in a second language The textbooks explored in this research areused in secondary schools with elementary level It is generally assumed that afterapproximately 700 class hours in seven years of studying (from 6th grade to 12thgrade), students should have mastered basic English phonetics and grammar, and toknow a minimum of around 2,000 vocabulary items of English It is a necessaryload of vocabulary knowledge for learners to be able to read authentic text as wellget real communication

Besides, we must first determine the percentage of lexical items in written orspoken discourse that a learner must know in order to understand it It waspreviously thought that around 95% coverage was sufficient (Laufer, 1989), butmore recent research suggests that the figure is closer to 98–99% (Hu & Nation,2000), at least for written discourse 98% coverage would mean that one word in 50

is unknown, which still does not make comprehension easy (Carver, 1994), and sothis is probably a reasonable minimum coverage figure Using word lists based on(the mainly written) British National Corpus,Nation(2006) calculated that 6000–

7000 word families are required to reach the 98% goal An analysis of the spokenCANCODE corpus (Adolphs and Schmitt, 2003) found coverage figures congruentwith Nation’s at the 3000 word family level (the upper limit of their analysis),supporting Nation’s calculations

Table 2.1 Vocabulary Size and Text Coverage of Written Discourse

Vocabulary size in Lemmas

(stem words and inflected forms)

Text coverage

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 15,851

2.3.2 Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge

Breath of vocabulary knowledge refers to the number of words the meaning

of which a learner has at least some superficial knowledge and can be calculated interms of recognition, recall or production of vocabulary items With secondlanguage learners the aim is often more narrowly defined in terms of theirknowledge of items in a specified list of relatively high frequencywords Vocabulary size tests that are used for proficiency or placement purposesshould include the broadest possible range of word families An estimation of totalvocabulary size can be attained in two ways The first is based on sampling from adictionary, and the second is based on corpus-derived lists of word families grouped

by frequency The dictionary sampling method involves selecting a dictionary thatcontains the number of word families that learners are expected to know, thentesting a selection of those words The problem with this method is that higherfrequency words tend to have longer entries, and are thus more likely to end up onthe test, which may skew the results The second method to estimate vocabularysize is to select word families according to their frequency in a corpus Usually,

these word families are grouped together into the first 1,000 most frequent words,the second 1,000 most frequent words, and so on The second method was appliedeffectively in this study.

2.3.3 Depth of vocabulary knowledge

Depth of vocabulary knowledge is defined as a learner’s level knowledge of

various aspects of a given word, or how well the learner knows this word Depth of

knowledge focuses on the idea that for useful higher-frequency words learners need

to have more than just a superficial understanding of the meaning According toQian (1999), the depth dimension should cover such components as pronunciation,spelling, meaning, register, frequency, and morphological, syntactic, andcollocational properties

2.4 Vocabulary learning from second language acquisition theories

Learning in second language has become of great research interest, a greatdeal of research has supported that vocabulary is a vital aspect of the secondlanguage acquisition No matter how well the student learns the grammar, no matterhow successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a widerange of meanings, communication in L2 just cannot happen in any meaningfulway However the second language vocabulary acquisition has been very largelyneglected by recent developments in research and most learners identify theacquisition of vocabulary as their greatest single source of problems

Moreover, the mastery of vocabulary is widely recognized as an essentialcomponent of second language and foreign language learning It plays a vital role inall aspects of language learning, including listening speaking, reading, writing andtranslation Therefore, learners must learn vocabulary well in order to becomeproficient in L2 acquisition Although learners are aware of the importance ofvocabulary acquisition in English learning, their effort made to learn vocabularyoften result in disappointment and frustration Learners themselves readily admitthat they experience considerable difficulty with vocabulary learning, especiallywhen they have got over the initial stages of acquiring their second language This

draws our attention to the complex nature of vocabulary acquisition and the factors

on the second language vocabulary acquisition Here the author reviews the factors

on the second language vocabulary acquisition and calls for our attention to it

Vocabulary acquisition has been approached from a variety of differenttheoretical perspectives: cognitive processes of vocabulary acquisition; the role offrequency in vocabulary acquisition or learning and how this question affectstextbooks; and the distribution of the vocabulary to be learnt all along the textbook.These theoretical positions will be reviewed one by one in the following sections

2.4.1 The learning of vocabulary from a cognitive perspective

Knowledge of the words of a language is the type of knowledge referred to

as ‘declarative knowledge’ (DEC) DEC opposes ‘procedural knowledge’ (PRO).

The nature of both types of knowledge may imply different strategies for theiracquisition That is the case when we refer, for example, to the role ofconsciousness or implicitness in learning Regarding the consolidation of bothtypes of knowledge, however, the basic strategy is the same: consolidation depends

on previous memorization, and memorization is governed by rehearsal It is true

that DEC may require only a single stimulus to be acquired at times (Ullman, 2004), while PRO will practically always result from repeated action triggered by recurrent stimuli Nevertheless, the consolidation of both DEC and PRO share a similar need

for repetition before becoming automatized (Sánchez & Criado, in press).Automatization is the only condition in skill learning that guarantees fluency ofperformance, which in the case of language will be fluency in communication.Declarative knowledge is acquired through association In the case of vocabulary,the acquisition depends on the association of things in the outside world to aconcept in our mind Associations are triggered by stimuli in the neural network(Ullman, 2004) A stimulus may begin at a specific neural node and is transmitted

to other neurons by means of neurotransmitters, which result from the release ofchemicals that change the electric polarization of the membrane in the neuralreceptors The transmission of the electrical signals runs along specific channels,

which strengthen under certain conditions Full consolidation is reached when thesame stimulus is able to automatically activate an already shaped channel andproduce similar results at the end of the neural circuitry There is still a long wayahead to fully understand how these initial electrical bits generated by andtransmitted through the neural system derive into knowledge Psycholinguisticsfirstly and neurolinguistics in the last decades are contributing a betterunderstanding of the cognitive processes that generate what we refer to as

‘knowledge’ (Anderson, 2005) One of the most relevant areas of cognitiveprocesses is how data are accessed, transmitted and memorized Memory isparticularly important in cognitive processes, since it is the device responsible forstoring data, keeping them at our disposal and accessing them whenever we needthem Our neural system is known to work with two types of memorization devices:

short-term memory and long-term memory (Anderson 2005; Atkinson & Shiffrin

1968) Data captured are first presented to short-term memory, a kind of workingmemory acting as an interface with the outside world Input entering the workingmemory flows very quickly and is immediately lost unless it enters long-termmemory Therefore, it can be stated that our working memory is the main entrancefor input data; it is equipped with a filter for evaluating and selecting only the dataconsidered relevant or necessary

From the point of view of efficiency in vocabulary learning, what matters isthe amount of lexical information entering and consolidating in long-term memory.Neurologists and psycholinguists tell us that long-term memory is activated andstrengthened mainly (i) through rehearsal or repetitive practice and activation, (ii)when attention is drawn to specific data, and (iii) when new data are associated insome way to already consolidated information The three options are accessible tolearners and teachers Repetitive practice has been present all throughout the history

of school teaching and there is no doubt on its efficacy as a teaching and learningtechnique (Sánchez & Criado, in press) The efficacy of repetition is due to thestructural changes that take place in the neural synapses (or connections among

neurons) Repeated connections strengthen the channel, and so the task is renderedeasier When the task becomes so easy that you can perform it with less effort orattention, it is because a certain degree of proceduralization of the process has beenreached At this point in the process, structural changes in the synapses affectedapparently cease and become stable In addition, more practice implies moreefficient execution Facts regarding the two types of memory and the consolidation

of data may be synthesized in the following way: most of the information whichflows through the short-term memory is usually lost, pressed by the permanent flow

of incoming data, unless repetitive iteration and/or attention favours its selection to

enter long-term memory Iteration or repetition, together with attention, is therefore

the habitual mechanism, which guarantees permanence and avoids oblivion ininformation storing

Cognitive processes in knowledge acquisition imply some conditions, whichteachers and teaching materials must meet One of them asks not only for thepresentation of new words, but also for opportunities to encourage and facilitaterepetition To reach such a goal, textbooks must be adequately planned regardingvocabulary distribution, firstly allowing for the presentation of new lexical itemsand promoting, in a second stage, abundant instances for repetition of the itemspreviously presented In addition to that, course books should also provideopportunities for explicit and implicit vocabulary acquisition The role ofconsciousness is emphasized in explicit activities, while language usage (bothreceptive and productive) is at the base of implicit activities Both types should be atwork in vocabulary learning; the method claimed by the textbook will define theprevalence of one or the other type of activities

2.4.2 Frequency and vocabulary learning

Frequency matters in vocabulary learning for two reasons: (i) most oftenused lexical items should be learned first, since they contribute towards acommunicative efficiency more significantly, and (ii) frequency of occurrenceoffers opportunities for repetitive practice This is one of the necessary conditions

for vocabulary consolidation, as is required by cognitiveprocesses in knowledgeacquisition Studies in vocabulary frequency abound nowadays, hand in hand withthe increasing interest in corpus linguistics and the computational facilities available(D’Anna, Zechmeister and Hall, 1991; Nation, 1993a, 1993b; Sánchez, 2000;Schmitt, 2000, among others) We have easy access today to frequency lists oflanguage use, and consequently reliable information on which words are preferred

by the speakers in different domains and communicative situations Information on

lexical frequency was already used in the Audio-lingual method to take decisions on

which words to select for the different teaching levels (Sánchez, 2009) It was thenassumed that the most frequent 800-1,000 words were to be learnt by elementarylevel students, while intermediate and advanced students would be presented thenext 800-1,000 or 2,000 words in the frequency list Research in this field hasrefined the tools of analysis and offers reliable and very useful results for teachersand textbooks The work by Nation (2001, 2006) is particularly relevant in this

respect Nation takes a classical classification of words: as tokens -every word form

in the text, be it repeated or not-, types -different words in the text, such as friend and friends, which are two types- and word families -the headword, its inflected

forms and its closely related derived forms He then establishes three consecutivevocabulary ranges, one thousand words each, based on corpus frequency data Theanalysis of the relationship among the three previous classes of words in a coursebook contributes towards significant information regarding the words reallypresented in it, their frequency and distribution along the book and the opportunitiesfor repetition directly depending on frequency Furthermore, the grouping of words

in word families adds useful and complementary information on the formal andsemantic relationships among the lexical items presented as learning targets Thethree basic ranges of words are roughly representative of the three basic levels inlanguage teaching materials concerning the amount of lexical items usuallyintroduced in each level: beginners (first 1,000 most frequent words), intermediate(second 1,000 most frequent words) and advanced (third 1,000 most frequent

words) Therefore, those word ranges may be taken as a reference against whichteaching materials (and specifically textbooks) can be compared The results of such

a comparison will reveal if a specific course book complies with the expectationsregarding vocabulary usage and the conditions governing knowledge acquisition ingeneral and vocabulary acquisition in particular The parallelism between real wordusage and frequency and the vocabulary offered by textbooks can be taken as apositive value, since students may benefit from it The lack of such a parallelismwould be considered a rather negative factor, given that teaching should look formore efficiency in communication This correlates with the amount of wordslearned and their relevance for communication

2.4.3 Nature of vocabulary acquisition: the importance of repetition

One significant nature of vocabulary acquisition is a word cannot be learned

by a single encounter Lexical acquisition requires multiple exposures to a word.Several studies (Elley, 1989; Stahl and Fairbanks,1986) stressed the importance ofrepetition as a crucial factor in incidental vocabulary learning Kachroo (1962)found that words that occurred seven or more times in the textbook were known bymost of the learners and over half of words occurring once or twice in the bookswere not known by most of the class A similar result was found by Salling (1959)that at least five repetitions were needed to ensure learning Crothers and Suppes(1967) found six or seven repetitions to be necessary Saragi et al (1978) found that

16 or more repetitions were needed Nation (1982) suggested seven repetitions areusually enough for most learners to be able to memorize a word To recognize the

meanings of a word, Nation (1982) found the average number of encounters needed

for most learners was sixteen Gairns and Redman (1986) suggested as few as eight

to twelve new items may be suitable (eight for elementary and twelve for advanced)per sixty-minute lesson for productive learning to happen Nagy (1997) reported thechances of learning and retaining a word from one exposure when reading are onlyabout 5%-14% Other studies suggested that it needs five to sixteen or morerepetitions for a word to be learned (Nation, 1990:44) In a few years later, Nation

(2001:81) further suggested “most learners required five to seven repetitions for thelearning of a group of six paired associates A few required over twentyrepetitions.”

Although different researchers have concluded different numbers ofrepetition, it is reasonable and sensible to conclude that five repetitions will beminimal and necessary Temporarily ignoring the number of repetitions, it is truethat repetition of words is a crucial factor to examine a textbook The followingquote summarizes the importance of repetition and the role of textbooks

“If the teacher or course book does not provide opportunity for sufficient repetition or for attention to vocabulary which will result in learning, then the effort spent in dealing with the vocabulary will be wasted” (Nation 1990:45)

2.4.4 Direct and Indirect Approaches to Vocabulary Learning

Students learn vocabulary indirectly when they hear and see words used inmany different contexts, for example, through conversations with others, throughreading extensively on their own, especially for children, they learn the meanings ofmost words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and writtenlanguage Students learn vocabulary directly when they are explicitly taught bothindividual words and word-learning strategies The scientific research onvocabulary instruction reveals that most vocabulary is learned indirectly and somevocabulary must be taught directly Direct instruction helps students learn difficultwords and direct instruction of vocabulary relevant to a given text leads to a betterreading comprehension In Nation’s view [12] (1990), direct vocabulary learningand indirect vocabulary learning are two approaches to vocabulary learning Heholds that, in direct vocabulary learning, the learners do exercises and activities thatfocus their attention on vocabulary Such exercises include word-building exercises,guessing words from context, learning words in lists, and vocabulary games Inindirect vocabulary learning, the learners’ attention is focused on some otherfeature, usually the message that is conveyed by a speaker or writer And

considerable vocabulary learning can occur if the amount of unknown vocabulary islow

2.4.5 Vocabulary input in textbooks

The three corpus-based word ranges defined by Nation (2001, 2006) areindicative of three consecutive stages in language command, as reflected invocabulary use: beginners, intermediate and advanced This is precisely theorganizational scheme of most textbooks It is therefore to be expected that coursebooks for each one of those levels keep close to the three vocabulary rangesmentioned above Beginner courses should roughly include range 1 words,intermediate courses should cover word range 2 and advanced courses shouldinclude word range 3 Textbooks can be analyzed against this expected pattern andthe vocabulary they contain evaluated according to the model described in eachword range The analysis will reveal how textbooks adjust to the word range theyhave been designed for Moreover, a closer look at the vocabulary presented willallow us to discover and define with accuracy in which way and how much aspecific textbook deviates from the word range it claims to represent Therequirement is that we compare the vocabulary in the textbook against each one ofthe three predefined ranges The sequence of ranges and the conditions derived fromthe cognitive processes underlying language acquisition ask for some additionalrequirements regarding vocabulary distribution along textbooks Firstly, new wordsmust be gradually introduced, possibly within the adequate communicative context;secondly, new words should mainly pertain to the range the textbook belongs to;thirdly, the working vocabulary as a whole should include enough instances andoffer abundant opportunities for practicing the new words previously introduced, be

it in the same word range or in the previous ones The result of such an analysis,implemented with computational tools, will clearly reveal if textbooks are the rightinstruments and if they can be considered suitable guides for teaching/learningvocabulary in a most efficient way

2.5 Previous studies on vocabulary presented in ELT textbooks

The assessment of vocabulary presented in ELT textbooks has attracted theattention of language teachers and researchers Most analyses on vocabulary input

in textbooks have aimed to ascertain vocabulary size, text coverage, threshold, highfrequency word lists, vocabulary recycling, suitability to learners’ level, grading andpresentation, vocabulary learning opportunities, communicative contexts as well aslexical syllabuses However, differences are observed concerning scope, target

language, and type of textbook researched These are previous studies on vocabulary presented in ELT textbooks , which focused on the above lexical issues.

Alfaki (2015) used the content analysis technique to examine features of lexicalitems presented in the book Spine, which was used in Iran The author found thatthat the textbook reflected a level of difficulty because it contains a large number oflow frequency words There was also a poor provision of new vocabulary items.43.8 % of vocabulary items were not recycled and 44.4% of the words wererecycled at varying degrees Matsuoka and Hirsh (2010) investigated thevocabulary learning opportunities in an ELT course book designed for upper-intermediate learners All the words appearing in the 12 chapters of the text wereanalyzed The results suggested that the text would provide opportunities to deepenknowledge of the second 1,000 most frequent words in English, and would provide

a context for pre-teaching of academic words met in the text for learners on anacademic pathway The results also suggested that the text would provide minimalopportunities for learners to develop vocabulary knowledge beyond high frequencyand academic words The findings demonstrated a need to supplement use of suchtexts with an extensive reading program and other forms of language rich input topromote vocabulary development

This study has suggested that, in order to adequately comprehend the ELTcourse book and guess unknown words from context, the reader requires knowledge

of the first and second 1,000 most frequent words, familiarity with or recognition ofproper nouns and a small number of technical, textual and technology words, and

pre-teaching of academic words occurring in the text Direct teaching of academicvocabulary in this context would provide good return for learners on an academicpathway Determining the vocabulary readiness of learners for the vocabularydemands of the text could be achieved through use of a diagnostic test such as theVocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 2001) The text provides favorable opportunitiesfor deepening knowledge of the second 1,000 word list due to frequent and spacedrepetitions of many words in various forms and with a range of collocations Thesecond 1,000 words list is under-researched in the literature Future research intothe presence of the second 1,000 words in texts could determine to what extentthese words assume general meanings independent of the subject matter or assumemore technical meanings associated more closely with subject matter Researchcould also investigate the extent to which groups of learners develop deepknowledge of these words at different stages of their learning.

In light of this, there would appear to be a strong case, when selecting ELTcourse books for classroom use, to supplement use of the text with extensivereading of graded readers or other suitable reading material This extensive readingprogram would ideally be in combination with direct vocabulary instruction (Nation

& Waring, 1997) and instructionally-enhanced reading to highlight vocabulary use(Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Zahar, Cobb, & Spada, 2001) in order toprovide a rich context for vocabulary development to equip learners with the lexicalresources required to understand and use the language effectively in a range ofcommunicative contexts

Takala (1984) and Miranda (1990) investigated the vocabulary input intextbooks aimed at secondary students; Kaszubsky (1998) sets out to prove thatEFL writing textbooks do not respond to learners’ needs; the study of Nation andWang (1999) attempted to ascertain whether their sample of readers provides goodconditions for vocabulary learning; Sutarsyah, Nation and Kennedy (1994) analyzethe vocabulary input of a collection of textbooks from different disciplines aimed atEnglish native speakers; Ljung (1991) gives evidence of the overuse of concrete

words to the detriment of abstract ones, as well as a poor representation of wordswhich are useful in the establishment of communicative interaction and socialrelationships For their part, Benitez Pérez & Zebrowski (1993) study thedistribution of vocabulary in Spanish as L2 textbooks

In spite of the variety of perspectives, the conclusions arrived at by thesestudies are quite similar since they point to three aspects: i) the number of words to

be included in textbooks; ii) the selection of vocabulary; and, iii) the number oftimes a word should be repeated However, none of these studies have consideredthe identification of the dimensions involved in the vocabulary activities included intextbooks

By referring to the above mentioned studies, the present evaluation forvocabulary presentation in EFL textbook aimed to evaluate the selected Englishlanguage course books ( New English 9) from the viewpoint of vocabularypresentation, vocabulary coverage by topics relating the illustration of vocabularyactivities Chapter III will provide information about the present study

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Textbook “New English 9”

Vietnamese general education consists of 12 grades: Primary school (fromgrade 1 to 5: for children aged 6 to 11); junior secondary school ( from grades 6 to 9for children aged 11 to 15) and senior secondary school (from grades 10 to 12 forchildren aged 15 to 18) Foreign languages (English or French or Russian) aretaught to children from grade 6 The series of current ELT textbooks forVietnamese secondary schools consists of seven student’s books ; the fourtextbooks English 6,7,8 and 9 are for junior secondary school students whilst theother three textbooks English 10,11and 12

“New English 9“is one of the textbooks in a pilot project The new setmaterials called English for Vietnam is being produced with funding from anAmerican business organization (BAVE/ The Business Alliance for VietnameseEducation) The textbooks have not been officially approved by Ministry ofEducation and Training (MOET) for classroom use A pilot project is being carriedout in a number of selected schools in the provinces to trial the feasibility of thepublished materials as well as proposed curriculum and the approach of teachingand learning Therefore , there is a long way to go before the BAVE series oftextbooks is completely implemented in Vietnamese schools It is my understandingthat MOET plans to have all the newly designed textbooks trialed, adapted andapproved in the coming years and ready for implementation nationwide

New English 9 is the final of the four levels of English language textbooksfor Vietnamese students in lower secondary schools learning English as a foreignlanguage It follows the systematic, cyclical, and theme-based syllabus approved bythe Ministry of Education and Training, which focused on the use of language(pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar) to develop the four language skills(listening, speaking, reading, and writing)

The tasks, language and content in the textbooks are selected according totopics difficulty and text difficulty These textbooks in the series are based on a

grammatical syllabus in which grammatical structures are divided into sectionsgraded according to difficulty and, or importance In the main, however, the wholeset of textbooks is more grammatically oriented and less communicatively oriented

as is illustrated by the schematics format Besides, topics covered in thepresentation of material vary widely and plentifully to reflect the characteristics ofthe society, the life-style, the civilization and the culture of English – speakingpeople Various topics are dealt with in the textbooks and all the texts, exercises,and use of vocabulary are thus selected to have relevance to each particular topic.The textbook contains four main parts: Book map (providing an overview of eachunit); 12 topics- based Units, each covering seven sections to be taught in seven 45lessons; Four Reviews, each providing revision and further practice of the previousthree units, to be dealt with over two lessons; Glossary: Giving meaning andphonetic transcriptions of the new words in the units

There are 12 main units in the textbooks Each unit has seven sections and

provides language input for seven classrooms of 45 minutes each They are Getting Started; A closer look 1; A closer look 2; Communication; Skills 1; Skills 2, and Looking back & Project These 12 richly illustrated, cross- curricular, and theme-

based units focus on offering students motivation, memorable lessons, and a joyfullearning experience

Section 1- Getting started - vocabulary is presented through the authentic

contexts Students at this level not only learn single words but also “chunks” ofEnglish such as idioms which combine vocabulary and grammatical patterns in anunanalyzed way

Section 2- Closer look 1- presents vocabulary and pronunciation of the unit.

The active vocabulary of the unit is given in an interesting and illustrated way sothat it is easy for students to memorize Intonation patterns, which frequently appear

in the unit, are targeted and practiced in isolation and in context There are differentexercises focusing on intensive practice of vocabulary and pronunciation

Section 3- A Closer look 2- dealts with the main grammar point of unit

Section4 – Communication - is to help students use the functional language

in everyday life contexts and to consolidate what they have learnt in the previoussections It also gives students opportunities to learn and apply the cultural aspects

of the language learnt

Section 5- Skills 1 – the reading text is presented The text is often based on

the vocabulary and structures that students have previously acquired Important newvocabulary is introduced in the text and practiced in a follow-up activity Thespeaking section supports students in their production of spoken English Thesection uses the recently introduced items in combination with previously learntlanguage in new contexts

Section 6- Skills 2 is composed of listening (receptive skill) and writing

(productive skill) The listening section provides students with an opportunity todevelop their listening skills Thic section trains them to listen for general andspecific information.The writing section focusses on developing students’writingskills There is a writing tip or a guideline which is very useful to hepl them to writethem effectively The result of the writing section must be a complete piece ofwriting

Section7 - Looking Back - the language is recycled from the previous

sections and it links with unit topics Various activities and exercises are designed

to help students consolidate anf apply what they have learnt in the unit Through thestudents’ performance in this secrtion, teachers can evaluate their study results andprovide further practice if necessary

The Project helps students to improve their ability to work by themselves

and in a team It extends their imagination in a field relatedto the topic The teachercan use this as an extra- curricular activity ( for groupwork) or as homework forstudents to do individually

3.2 Research method

Since the purpose of this study is to investigate how vocabulary is presentedand approached in the TIENG ANH textbooks, two methods : content analysis and

corpus-based methods are used

In this study, the researcher used the descriptive method the content analysis

- conceptual analysis Traditionally, content analysis has most often been thought of

in terms of conceptual analysis In conceptual analysis, a concept is chosen forexamination and the number of its occurrences within the text recorded Becauseterms may be implicit as well as explicit, it is important to clearly define implicitterms before the beginning of the counting process To limit the subjectivity in thedefinitions of concepts, specialized dictionaries are used As with most otherresearch methods, conceptual analysis begins with identifying research questionsand choosing a sample or samples Once chosen, the text must be coded intomanageable content categories The process of coding is basically one of selective

reduction, which is the central idea in content analysis By breaking down thecontents of materials into meaningful and pertinent units of information, certaincharacteristics of the message may be analyzed and interpreted.

3.2.2 Corpus-based method

Another method used in this study is corpus-based method Schmitt(2000:68) mentioned corpora are “simply large collections or databases of language,incorporating stretches of discourse ranging from a few words to entire books”.According to Richards et al (1992:110) “A corpus is a collection of materials thathas been made for a particular purpose, such as a set of textbooks which are beinganalyzed and compared …” By the above two definitions of a corpus, a corpus isnot necessarily compiled from a very huge amount of large data A textbook or a set

of textbooks can be viewed as a corpus Corpora allow researchers, teachers andlearners to use great amounts of real data in their study to view language at adifferent perspective (Schmitt, 2000:68).The present study is corpus research which

is one of the sub-fields of vocabulary research The famous linguistics Nation(2001: 31) asserted a corpus research requires three essential elements: 1) a set ofgood research questions that can be answered by study of a corpus, 2) a corpus toprovide data source, and 3) the computer programs that can facilitate the task oforganizing the data from the corpus The textbooks used as the corpus data will bediscussed in depth in the following research data and data processing sections Andthe other element of corpus research, that is the computer programs used in thestudy, will be introduced in the research tools section later

3.3 Research questions.

This study was conducted to answer the following research questions:

1.What kind of vocabulary words are high school students exposed to and expected

to master in the new TIENG ANH 9 textbooks?

2 How words are distributed and recycled and what dimensions of lexical knowledge are covered in the researched textbooks?

3 What types of exercises are dominant in the researched textbooks ? How

adequate are these vocabulary exercises types to the development of students’ lexical knowledge?

3.4 Data analysis

Before analyzing the research data, at the very beginning stage of theresearch, the data processing stage, two small textbook corpora were compiled Tocompile the written textbook corpora for the study, all pages of the textbooks werescanned by an optical character recognition (OCR) computer program and saved in

Microsoft Word format Spell check was carefully done to eliminate the text

recognition error made by the OCR program Then, all the running words in eachstudent book were extracted from the pages and were converted to as a pure text fileformat (.txt) because a pure text file format is the recognizable file format that can

be further processed by two computer programs for further analysis The scanningand file saving procedures were as follows:

All the running words in each student book were extracted and converted to one ‘electronically – recognizable’ file, (e.g TA9-1.txt) By combining the computer files of student book 1 (e.g TA9-1.txt) and book 2(e.g TA9-2.txt ), a new

file (e.g.TA9.txt) encompassing all the running words used in the two student books

in a school year could be compiled There files were used for further analysis by

computer program: Range for different purposes The procedures will be explained

in the following sections one by one

3.5 Research tools

To extract the relevant quantitative data in both textbooks I relied onRANGE (http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx), acomputational tool designed by Nation RANGE counts and classifies vocabulary inthree frequency categories (at present up to 14)1: the first 1,000, the second 1,000and the third 1,000 most frequent words of general English These frequencycategories are called RANGES as well, so that the word RANGE in the presentstudy is taken as each one of the 1,000 word groups sequentially determined in thefrequency list considered In our study, words not included within the first three

most frequent ranges (i.e., the most frequent 3,000 words) appear as off ranges.RANGE reads each one the books selected and previously digitized and classifiesthe words within each range as tokens (every word form in the text, be it repeated ornot), types (different words in the text: friend and friends are two types) and wordfamilies (the headword, its inflected forms and its closely related derived forms),which is relevant for our study.

Data were analyzed with the help of VocabProfile (VP), which is a computer

program which performs lexical text analysis, comparing words in a text with wordlists that accompany the program developed by Headley, Nation and Cozhead(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) This computer softwarecreates RANGE and FREQUENCY programs which incorporates the GeneralService List of English Words (GSL), Academic Word List (AWL) based on

English words occurring frequency, range and dispersion figures The Range

software is used to compare a text against certain base word lists to see what words

in the texts are and are not in the lists, to see what percentage of vocabulary items inthe text are covered by the list, namely text coverage In particular, it can also beused to compare the vocabulary of many text files at a time to see how much of thesame vocabulary they use (i.e range) and the frequency of occurrence of the words

in total and in each file The principle s used in the Range software to make word

families are based on Bauer and Nation’s (1993) six-level scale

3.5.1 Vocabulary Profile (VP)

In this study the Vocabulary Profile (VP) was used to measure thevocabulary size, frequency of vocabulary, text coverage in the new TIENG ANH 9(Books 1 and 2) to create a corpus for analysis VP was also used to examine iftypical communicative ESL classrooms are a good place to learn a lot of newvocabulary (Meara, Lightbown & Halter, 1997) The lexical richness of texts was

measured by the Range with three-ready-made base lists to be used in text

analysis The first base list contains the most frequent 1,000 words of English Thesecond base list contains the second 1,000 most frequent words, and the third base

list contains words not in the first 2,000 words of English but which are frequent inupper secondary school and university texts from a wide range of subjects Thebase forms of words and derived forms are included in all of these base lists Thefirst 1,000 words thus consist of around 4,000 forms or types The sources of these

lists are A General Service List of English Words (West, 1953) for the first 2000

words, and The Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1998, 2000) containing 570 word

families The first thousand words of A General Service List of English Words are

usually those in the list with a frequency higher than 332 occurrences per 5 millionwords, plus months, days of the week, numbers, titles (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Mister),and frequent greetings (Hello, Hi etc) The lists include both American and British

spellings Apostrophes are treated as spaces, so I've is counted as two items, as is Jane's.

Table 3.1 An example of a word list table of Tiếng Anh 9 - Book 1( TA9-1)

Coverage (in tokens)

In this study, apart from using Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) to examinethe lexical nature of the textbooks, lexical variation (LV) was another measure toinvestigate the lexical richness of the textbooks To be more precisely, theresearcher used LV to examine the degree of repetition of words and the degree oflexical diversity of the textbooks LV takes as its starting point the distinctionbetween token and type If a text has 500 words, it is said to contain 500 tokens, butwithin the 500-word text, many of these tokens may be repeated and this may give

us a lower total of types (different words).According to Laufer and Nation(1995),

LV is the type/token ratio, the ratio in per cent between the different words in thetext and the total number of running words The lower the ratio, the more repetitionthere is in a text, and the fewer types need to be known to comprehend the text LV

is calculated with the following formula:

number of types ( number of different words)

LV = - X 100

number of tokens ( total number of words in the text)

In the study, LV ratios were calculated the lexical variation of the first set ofNew English 9 and the second set of New English 9 , then the lexical variation ofthe two textbooks The LV ratios were calculated by hand after the figures of tokens

and types outputted by Range when calculating LFP of the textbook titles By

calculating the LV ratios, the lexical richness of the textbooks was examined by thedegree of repetition of words and the degree of lexical diversity of the textbooks

3.6 Framework of vocabulary knowledge dimensions

Many scholars have proposed taxonomies of vocabulary knowledge They

may differ in the number and the nature of the dimensions but basically, as JiménezCatalán (2002:155) notes, most classifications can be grouped into grammar and

semantics dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, other aspects such as the vocabulary retrieval and store in learners’ mental lexicon and the pedagogy of

vocabulary teaching or learning are neglected

Many studies have analyzed the vocabulary input in foreign languagelearners’ textbooks from different perspectives, such as vocabulary selection andpresentation, external and internal word frequency, rank order, word distribution orthe relation between input and uptake In this study, not only have the research onvocabulary focusing on word frequency but also the analysis of dimensions of wordknowledge underlying in vocabulary activities been paid attention to

Given the role played by textbooks and vocabulary in foreign languageeducation it is important for teachers and researchers to examine vocabulary input

in learners’ textbooks The present study responds to this need Likewise, it also

aims to contribute to narrow the gap in the study of pedagogical dimensions, usuallyoverlooked in vocabulary knowledge taxonomies This is a preliminary step in thisregard Our objectives were twofold The first one was to identify the maindimensions of vocabulary knowledge underlying in vocabulary activities intextbooks; the second one was to ascertain whether there were similarities ordifferences regarding the distribution of vocabulary knowledge dimensions in thetargeted textbooks.

This preliminary study was based on a content analysis of vocabularyactivities drawn from two English textbooks used for students in grade 9 in a pilotcurriculum in some Vietnam secondary schools, named “Tiếng Anh tập 1”( TA9-1)and Tiếng Anh tập 2”( TA9-2) As a framework for our analysis we followedJiménez Catalán’s (2002: 155) classification of vocabulary knowledge dimensions,our translation and adaption of this classification is included in the following chart

Table 3.2 Vocabulary knowledge dimensions (adapted from Jiménez Catalán (2002:155)

No Vocabulary knowledge dimensions

1 Know the grammar, pronunciation and orthography of a word

2 Know the morphology of a word

3 Know the collocability of a word

4 Know the syntactic restrictions of a word

5 Know the frequency in oral and written language of a word

6 Know the contexts where a word can be used

7 Know a word semantic and syntactic relations with other words

8 Recognize the word in its written and oral form

9 Recover the word when it is needed

10 Know the conceptual and referential meaning of a word

11 Know the meanings that the word connotes

12 Know the pragmatic sense of a word

As can be observed in table 3.2, each lexical dimension has been given anumber For the sake of clarity we will use those numbers to refer to the vocabulary

knowledge dimensions summarized in the Findings and Discussion sections.

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS This corpus-based study of TIENG ANH 9 textbook examines the role the textbook may play in vocabulary learning In this chapter, the findings are divided

into two parts The first part is the findings relating to the vocabulary presentation inthe light of lexical terms It contains the five sub sections The first sectionpresents the findings about the text coverage of textbooks in terms of the number ofrunning words and the distribution of textbooks coverage according to thefrequency of the running words The second section presents the lexical richness oftextbooks by examining lexical variation (LV) The second part is concerned aboutvocabulary activities in the textbooks The dimensions of vocabulary knowledgeare paid attention to in activities illustrated in the textbook The findings referring

to them are displayed in two sections

4.1 Findings relating to the vocabulary types

4.1.1 Lexical frequency profile and text coverage

To examine the lexical nature of the two textbook titles, namely Tieng anh 9 Book 1(TA9 - 1) and Tieng Anh 9 Book 2 (TA9-2) and the corpus of the two textbooks in grade 9 , namely Tieng Anh 9 Books 1+ 2 (TA9), the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) of the three corpora was generated by the computer program Range The distribution of words in each set of TA9-1, TA9-2 and the

corpus of two sets of textbooks Tieng Anh 9 book 1& Tieng Anh 9 book 2 (TA9) isillustrated in Table 4.1 The word distribution in TA9-1 was presented in columntwo and three The word distribution in TA9-2 was presented in column four andfive The last two columns show the word distribution of two sets of textbook(TA9) In every left column of the table, word list one refers to the first 1,000 wordlist; word list two refers to the second 1,000; word list three refers to the listcontaining words not in the first 2,000 words of English but which are frequent inupper secondary school and university texts from a wide range of subjects These

three lists are the Range default ready-made base lists.

Table 4.1 The distribution of words in the textbooks Tiếng Anh 9 Book 1, Tiếng Anh 9 Book 2 and Tiếng Anh 9 Books 1+2

TYPES

- % % Text Coverage

(in tokens)

Findings showed in Table 4.1, the total number of tokens in the textbooks ofTA9 is 48596, it was increasing slightly from 23205 in the first set´”Tiếng Anh 9tập 1” to 25595 in the second set “Tiếng Anh 9 tập 2” Therefore, in terms ofrunning words, that is tokens, they progressively increased by textbook levels The

accelerating number of tokens in two series of Tieng Anh 9 textbooks indicates thelearners are exposed to more words, in terms of tokens, when studying at a higherlevel It is predictable that more words are incorporated in the textbooks used inhigher level by textbook writers The results apparently show TA9-1 has moretokens than TA9-2 in three wordlists (please refer to table 4.2) This explains whyTA9-1 is more difficult than TA9-2 when merely looking at the number of runningwords in the textbooks.

Table 4.2 Comparison of tokens in TA9-1 and TA9-2

program Range to generate LFP The distribution of tokens in the English textbooks

are displayed in the table 4.3.The tokens, in the student books in each level were

compared with the three built-in word lists accompanied in Range.

Table 4.3 Comparison of token coverage in textbooks