English Textbooks: A Vocabulary perspective

Abstract

The present study entitled"English Textbooks: A Vocabulary Perspective"is an attempt to study the vocabulary items used in the new English textbook for grade five and find out excluded and repeated vocabulary items from the old textbook,as well as to find out word forms included in the new English textbook as new entry.The vocabulary items are analyzed in terms of total numbers, parts of speech, frequency of occurrence, syllable structure,morphological structure and word structure. Basically, all the vocabulary items used in the new and old English text books for grade five published by CDC are used as the secondary source of this study.Regarding the findings of this study, 1413 different vocabulary items are found in the new English textbook.The word 'the' has the highest frequency of occurrence of all.Among different vocabulary items, 'nouns' have the highest share and 'articles' occupy the lowest. Seven abbreviated and 37 contracted forms are used in the textbook.One, two, three, four and five syllabic words are used in the textbook including monomorphemic and polymorphemic ones. Out of 909 vocabulary items used in the old English textbook for grade V,268 words are excluded,641 are repeated and 772 words are included as 'new entry' in the new textbook. The study is divided into four chapters, Chapter one introduces the study interms of introduction,the general background, review of related literature,objectives of the study and definition of the specific terms.Chapter two deals with the methodology adopted for the study under which, the sources of data,process of data collection and limitations of the study are presented.

Chapter three consists of analysis and interpretation of vocabulary items.Mainly descriptive and analytical approaches have been used for the purpose. Chapter four discusses the major findings and recommendations of the study.