| Few concerning research on lexical complexity in high school English textbooks has been available so far.With new revised textbooks being published,lexical complexity in the new series of textbooks needs to be studied increasingly.Therefore,this paper aims at exploring the comprehensive characteristics of lexical complexity between Advance with English(AWE)(2020)and New Senior English for China(NSEFC)(2020)by addressing the following three research questions:(1)What are the overall characteristics of lexical complexity of all the texts in Advance with English(AWE)(2020)and New Senior English for China(NSEFC)(2020)in terms of lexical density,lexical diversity and lexical sophistication?(2)What are the similarities and differences of the lexical complexity in all the texts between the two textbook series in terms of the above three variables?(3)What are the respective differences of lexical complexity in all the textbooks from each set of textbooks in terms of the above three variables?Based on the theoretical framework of lexical complexity(Vajjala & Meurers,2012)and design philosophy of L2LCA(Lu,2012),combined with lexical complexity in reading passages from National Matriculation English Test(NMET)papers as the reference,this study adopted L2 LCA as the analysis tool to investigate lexical complexity in AWE(including 3 compulsory volumes and 2 optionally compulsory ones)and NSEFC(including 3 compulsory volumes and 4 optionally compulsory ones)high school English textbooks from lexical density,lexical diversity and lexical sophistication,involving 9 indices,arriving at the following conclusions:1.The overall characteristics of lexical complexity in two revised series of textbooks can be summed up as two points.(1)LD for lexical density,LS1 and VS2 for LS maintain at a similar level in 12 textbooks.(2)In terms of lexical variation,noun,adjective,adverb and modifier variation in each volume keep the same in 12 textbooks,except for CTTR and verb variation.CTTR in A4 is much higher than that in N1 and N2.A4 and A5 are inclined to integrate more various verbs into texts than N1 and N2.2.Three points can be concluded though the comparison of lexical complexity between NSEFC and AWE:(1)From the perspective of lexical density,compulsory NSEFC volumes tend to employ more lexical words than compulsory AWE ones.(2)In terms of lexical diversity,adverb and modifier variation arrive at a similar level in both versions of textbooks.AWE series places more emphasis on CTTR and verb variation than NSEFC does.NC and TBN contain more kinds of nouns than AC and TBA,whereas optional AWE textbooks take various adjectives seriously than NO.(3)Lexical sophistication in NSEFC and AWE is nearly the same.3.The changes of lexical complexity in each set of textbooks are displayed as follows: during the transition from compulsory textbooks to optional volumes of NSEFC and AWE,lexical diversity and sophistication(especially the ratio of various verbs as well as advanced verbs)all go up properly.Instead,noun,adverb and modifier variation go down.Lexical density and adjective variation keep the same. |
