A Corpus-Based Study On Academic Word List Coverage Of General English Textbooks For Non-English Majors In Chinese Universities

Whether the focus of college English teaching should be predicated as English for Academic Purposes(EAP)or English for General Purposes(EGP)has been a debate topic in the academic circles.Cai Jigang believes that EAP should dominate the teaching of college English.EGP should be marginalized and gradually be replaced.The development goal of college English teaching is EAP.A group of scholars represented by Wang Shouren believe that college English teaching should not be based solely on EAP.Scholars represented by Wen Qiufang believe that EGP and EAP should coexist in university teaching.In 2015,the College English Curriculum Requirements(Exposure Draft)(hereinafter referred as Requirements)listed EAP as part of the domestic college English teaching content for the first time in the national guidance document.However,in the Requirements,EGP is still considered as the focus of college English teaching in domestic universities and EAP is not considered as the main teaching content.The implied premise of all the debate is that before the reform of college English teaching in Shanghai in 2013,the content of college English teaching was EGP,but this implied premise has not yet been empirically confirmed through empirical research.In 2000,Coxhead compiled Academic Word List(AWL)by establishing a corpus of English academic texts containing 3,523,330 words covering 28 majors of 4 subjects,which are humanities,business,law,and science.AWL coverage in the corpus of EAP is about 10%,and the coverage in the similar-sized corpus of novels is only 1.4%.AWL has been confirmed by a large number of scholars for analyzing whether the English text is academic or not.Based on these studies,we can assume that when the AWL coverage is close to or exceeds 10%,the text is "academic".While texts with AWL coverage around 1.4% are texts of EGP.Based on the research of Coxhead,four sets of “general” English textbooks with a wide range of application and a certain representativeness are selected for quantitative analysis to verify the academic nature of the textbook language.The four sets of textbooks are New College English an Integrated Course(3rd Ed.)by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press with the editor in chief of Ying Huilan(hereinafter referred to as NCE-FLTPR),New College English Integrated Course(2nd Ed.)by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press with the editor in chief of Li Yinhua(hereinafter referred to as NCE-SFLEP),New Horizon College English Reading and Writing(3rd Ed.)by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press with the editors in chief of Ding Yaping and Wu Yong(hereinafter referred to as NHCE-FLTRP)and College English Top Notch Integrated Course by Higher Education Press with the writers of Joan Saslow and Allen Ascher(hereinafter referred to as CE-HEP).By studying the AWL coverage of college English textbooks,the paper provides data support for the debate in the academic circles whether the focus of college English teaching is EGP or EAP from statistic perspective.The results point to the following findings: First,the overall AWL coverage of NCE-FLTPR is 3.34%.The overall AWL coverage of NCE-SFLEP is 3.21%.The overall AWL coverage of NHCE-FLTRP is 4.63%,and the overall AWL coverage of CE-HEP is 4.21%.All of them are between EGP and EAP,but closer to EGP than EAP.Second,AWL coverage for each book of every set of textbook is between 1.4% and 10%,but the books in each textbook series have not followed in proper order and advance gradually except for NCE-FLTPR.Third,the AWL coverage among texts varies significantly,and the AWL coverage rate trend of all the texts in each book is basically spiraling upward.Fourth,the linguistic academicity of the text is closely related to language difficulty.This finding is helpful for textbook writers to revise textbooks.It's also helpful for teachers and students to choose the textbook learning order.It has certain referential significance for the reform of college English teaching in China.The textbook writers can replace several texts according to the data in the textbook revision process,and make reasonable adjustments to the order in which the text appears.Students can refer to the data in this article to choose learning texts according to their own needs.Teachers can adjust the teaching order according to the data of this article for improving students' English reading ability step by step.More importantly,it provides data support for the reform of college English teaching.Only by understanding the current situation of college English teaching can we make better use of reforms to optimize college English teaching.