A Corpus-based Evaluation Of Vocabulary In English Textbooks For Senior High School

Textbooks are “whether we like it or not, these represent for both students andteachers the visible heart of any English Language Teaching programme”(Sheldon,1998, P.237). It is undeniable that textbooks play a very important role in Englishlanguage teaching and the study and evaluation of textbooks are very necessary. Thispaper aims to make a corpus-based evaluation of the New Standard English textbooksfor senior high schools in Shenyang from the perspective of vocabularyTools like Rang32and Antconc are used to test the coverage and the frequency of thevocabulary to find out whether the textbooks have covered enough base word in PaulNation and where there is enough vocabulary frequency.The research findings show that the New Standard English have a good coverageof the base words in Paul Nation. However, the word frequency is not verysatisfactory due to the fact that many words only appear once to three times. Throughthe corpus-based evaluation of the textbooks, the researcher of the textbooks providessome suggestions for the textbook designers and on some pedagogical implicationsfor the teachers.