THE MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS …

[Pages:139]THE MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR GRADES 1-3

Liping He

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Language Studies Suranaree University of Technology Academic Year 2009

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THE MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR GRADES 1-3

Suranaree University of Technology has approved this thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master's Degree.

Thesis Examining Committee

(Asst. Prof. Dr. Siriluck Usaha) Chairperson

(Dr. Sirinthorn Seepho) Member (Thesis Advisor)

(Dr. Butsakorn Yodkamlue) Member

(Prof. Dr. Sukit Limpijumnong) Vice Rector for Academic Affairs

(Dr. Peerasak Siriyothin) Dean of Institute of Social Technology

 : 1-3 (THE MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR GRADES 1-3) : . , 125

500 3

146,192 501 14 3,818 (The GSL) (head word) 500 2 2 1 115 500 1-3

500 (The GSL) West Oxford (The Oxford Word List) Dolch (The Dolch Basic Word List) The Dolch Basic Word List 500

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LIPING HE : THE MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR GRADES 1-3. THESIS ADVISOR : SIRINTHORN SEEPHO, Ph.D., 125 PP.

MOST FREQUENT VOCABULARY / HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS / GRADES 1-3 / EFL/ESL YOUNG LEARNERS

Vocabulary is one of the key components of successful language learning because it is central to learners' communicative competence. Therefore, words EFL/ESL students need to learn must be well selected for effective teaching and efficient learning. With no research-based English vocabulary lists for Grades 1-3 Thai students, the present study aimed to find a list of the first 500 words most frequently appearing in textbooks these young learners need to learn and to compare the list with three other most frequently quoted lists.

A corpus of 146,192 running words was first compiled from 501 lessons of the 14 series of textbooks. From this initial corpus, a total of 3,818 word types in frequency rank were identified from running the Range GSL and manually lemmatized to extract all base forms. With the proper nouns eliminated, the same process was undertaken for nouns, lemmatizing plural and possessive forms into uninflected head word entries. As a result, 500 words occurring at the higher frequency were selected. Five experienced primary level EFL teachers, two Thais, two ESL speakers and one native speaker of English, were asked to validate the list. They decided whether the controversial words from the main list in question should be included in or excluded from the finalized word list and replaced with substitute

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words from the supplementary 115-word list. Finally, the Most Frequent 500-Word List for Grades 1-3 was yielded.

To further investigate whether the words in the Most Frequent 500-Word List for Grades 1-3 appeared in three popular word lists, the General Service List created by Michael West, the Oxford Word List, and the Dolch Basic Word List, comparisons were made to see if there was any overlap among the vocabulary. The results showed that the percentage of overlap increased with a decrease in size of word lists and that there was a very high percentage of overlap between the Dolch Basic Word List and the present study's Most Frequent 500-word list.

School of English Academic Year 2009

Student's Signature Advisor's Signature

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Eventually, after a long journey, I see the dawn of success ? obtaining my M.A. During the long journey there were joy and hardship, excitement, also confusion accompanied. It would not have been possible to complete my thesis, the termination of my long journey, without patience, understanding, help and many supports of the people who are gratefully acknowledged here.

My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my dedicated supervisor, Dr. Sirinthorn Seepho, for her constant patience, encouragement, understanding, kindness and guidance. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her great ideas, profound knowledge in English studies, consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have been yielded.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Asst. Prof. Dr. Siriluck Usaha, former Chair of School of English, who led me into the world of graduate study at Suranaree University of Technology. With her invaluable support and caring I could persevere in spite of all kinds of difficulties and problems. Without her great help and priceless suggestions this thesis could not have reached its present form. I'm also extremely grateful to another committee member, Dr. Butsakorn Yodkamlue, for her precious comments and advices on this thesis.

I'm very much obliged to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jeremy Ward for his knowledgeable remarks and professional criticisms on the present study and other instructors of school of English who have taught me, initiated me and enlightened me.

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I also owe my sincere gratitude to the five English teaching experts who helped me with validation and the schools and teachers in Nakhon Ratchasima who offered me information for the present study.

My tremendous thanks go to my M.A. classmate, Kanya Pieniazek, for her indispensable assistance in collecting data for the present study and also generous help with living in a foreign country as an international student in many ways. I am also greatly indebted to my other friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the whole course of my M.A. study ? especially my Thai senior Duangporn Sriboonruang, who helped me with data input and my international friend, Lilibeth Lago, who also helped me with data collection and I will always remember out night talk and discussion when we were roommates.

At last but not least, my thanks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these years. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my beloved mother and father, Zhang Huaxing and He Fuyuan. They bathed me with their love and irrigated me with their caring during my growth. I could not have reached this stage without them being with me and their wholehearted support.

Liping He

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