Independent degree project

Vocabulary Profiles of English

Language Learning Textbooks

A lexical analysis of textbooks used in EFL

classrooms

Author: Salome Larsson

Supervisor: Špela Mežek

Examiner: Charlotte Hommerberg

Semester: Spring 2017

Subject: English

Level: Advanced

Course code: 4ENÄ2E

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Abstract

This independent degree project investigates the vocabulary profiles in English language

learning textbooks used in Sweden, and whether the vocabulary profiles follow the expected

levels according to the CEFR and The Swedish National Agency for Education. This was done

by a corpus-driven method, as well as a lexical analysis using search tools such as the English

Vocabulary Profile, Text Inspector, and Compleat Lexical Tutor. The corpus contained texts

from six different textbooks used in year 6, year 9, and in the English 7 course, as well as a

number of news articles from The Guardian. The news articles served the purpose of comparing

the vocabulary levels in the textbooks for English 7 with the vocabulary levels in advanced

written English, which is a requirement for students to be able to understand in order to reach

the lowest passing grade in English 7. The lexical analysis focused on lexical diversity, word

families, word frequency, and the CEFR levels. The results showed that the vocabulary levels

in the textbooks were appropriate, but that they might not provide enough challenge for students

aiming for the higher grades. Results also showed that the vocabulary levels advanced in

relation with the school years. The analysis revealed that between 90 and 97 percent of the

vocabulary in the texts were categorized as within the CEFR levels that were expected of each

of the school years. Pedagogical implictions drawn from this investigation are that teachers

should teach about word families and that they can benefit from using the EVP when providing

educational material in addition to textbooks.

Keywords: Vocabulary, English language learning textbooks, CEFR, L2 learning, Sweden

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Table of contents

1 Introduction ________________________________________________________ 1

1.1 Aim _________________________________________________________________ 3

2 Theoretical background _______________________________________________ 3

2.1 Second language vocabulary learning _______________________________________ 3

2.2 Learning words ________________________________________________________ 4

2.2.1 Knowing a word ____________________________________________________ 4

2.2.2 Vocabulary size ____________________________________________________ 5

2.2.3 Learnability factors _________________________________________________ 6

2.3 Categorizing words _____________________________________________________ 7

2.3.1 Word families ______________________________________________________ 7

2.3.2 Word frequency ____________________________________________________ 8

2.4 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages _____________________ 9

2.4.1 The English Profile Programme ______________________________________ 11

2.4.2 CEFR levels in Sweden _____________________________________________ 12

2.5 English language teaching textbooks ______________________________________ 13

3 Methodology _______________________________________________________ 14

3.1 Material _____________________________________________________________ 14

3.2 Textbooks ___________________________________________________________ 15

3.2.1 Year 6 textbooks ___________________________________________________ 15

3.2.2 Year 9 textbooks ___________________________________________________ 16

3.2.3 English 7 textbooks _________________________________________________ 17

3.3 Method _____________________________________________________________ 18

3.3.1 Data collection: Corpus _____________________________________________ 18

3.3.2 Lexical analysis ___________________________________________________ 20

3.3.3 English Vocabulary Profile, Text Inspector and Compleat Lexical Tutor _______ 22

3.3.4 Validity and reliability ______________________________________________ 24

3.3.5 Ethical issues _____________________________________________________ 24

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3.3.6 Problems and limitations ____________________________________________ 25

4 Results and Analysis _________________________________________________ 25

4.1 Lexical Diversity ______________________________________________________ 25

4.2 Word Families ________________________________________________________ 27

4.3 Word Frequency ______________________________________________________ 29

4.4 CEFR Levels _________________________________________________________ 32

5 Conclusion _________________________________________________________ 36

References ___________________________________________________________ I

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1 Introduction

Textbooks are used in language learning classrooms all over the world. Harwood (2014:1)

claims that textbooks often constitute the syllabus and that teachers are expected to use

them to structure the lessons. In the US, the lessons can be up to 90 percent structured

around the textbook. Similar numbers apply to textbooks used when teaching English as

a foreign language (EFL) (ibid), and Sweden is no exception (Englund, 2006:20).

Textbooks in the subject of English can be found at all levels, from the first grade to upper

secondary school. They provide texts and exercises developed to meet the syllabus criteria

and to fit the students’ language proficiency level. For many teachers, especially those

with little experience of the profession, textbooks play the role of working as a safety net

in the sense that the level of English is already predetermined by the authors. To

determine the suitable level of English can otherwise be a struggle for teachers that decide

to provide the students with other materials.

Researchers in the area of second language acquisition (SLA) have for a long time

advocated the importance of comprehensible input (Krashen, 1989; Long, 1980;

Pienemann, 1999). Krashen (1989:440) famously presented what he calls “the input

hypothesis”, in which he claims that vocabulary is key in order to master a language and

that the most efficient way of acquiring vocabulary is through comprehensible input in

the form of reading. This input needs to be within the acquirers’ understanding, but at the

same time at a slightly higher level than what they are at the moment in order for the

student to develop their language proficiency further (Krashen, 1982:16). This entails that

some of the language used in language learning textbooks needs to be positioned at a level

just above the students’ current level, in order to provide the most profitable learning

opportunity possible.

Nation (2001:145) suggests, based on several studies, that learners need to understand a

minimum of 65-70% of the vocabulary in a text in order to have a “reasonable”

comprehension of the text. Context plays a crucial role in vocabulary learning as well,

which according to Nagy (1997:64), relates to the importance of reading comprehension.

If a student struggles with understanding the context in which a word stands, the chance

that he/she will learn it decreases drastically. This all together demonstrates that the level

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of the vocabulary used in textbooks plays a major role in how successfully students will

learn new vocabulary.

The area of second language vocabulary acquisition and learning has been extensively

researched for many years (Nagy, 1995; Coady & Huckin, 1997; Nation, 2001; Laufer &

Girsai, 2008). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR),

which is a guideline for language learners and educationists across Europe, has made use

of much of this research in order to create descriptions of learners’ achievements. These

descriptions are divided into six levels (A1 to C2), each level containing a series of “can-

do statements” which the learner should be able to do in order to reach that level of

proficiency (Council of Europe, 2001:22-25). The CEFR levels have been widely

accepted throughout Europe and are being used to describe how proficient students are in

their second or foreign language (L2). Sweden is one of the countries that have accepted

the CEFR levels and The Swedish National Agency for Education has adopted these

levels and uses them to describe at what level students should be at in the subject of

English, in each year. For example, a student in year 6 should reach the level A2 on the

CEFR scale, while a student in year 9 should reach B1 (Skolverket, n.d.a).

Even though the CEFR levels have been accepted as a way of describing language

proficiency, it is unclear whether textbook writers in Sweden keep these levels in mind

when writing the textbooks used in schools. According to Harwood (2014:2), content,

and therein linguistic information, is one of the aspects of a textbook that should be

studied to see if it is suitable for use in the classroom. Sheldon (1988:237) claims, as well,

that evaluating textbooks is about matching the textbook with the student’s needs.

However, while some studies have been done on textbooks in other countries (e.g.

Francis, 1995; Chujo, 2004), few studies like this have been conducted concerning

English language learning textbooks in Sweden. Most textbook analyses have

concentrated on how different themes are presented, and how well the themes meet the

syllabus criteria (e.g. Höglund, 2006; Hansen & Broberg, 2006; Falk, 2012). This study

will therefore contribute to another perspective, since it focuses on the linguistic and

lexical content of textbooks and how these match the needs of the students.

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1.1 Aim

The aim of this essay is to investigate whether the language, specifically the vocabulary,

in textbooks used in the EFL classrooms in Swedish schools corresponds with the level

which The Swedish National Agency for Education and the CEFR consider appropriate

at certain grades. This will be done by analyzing the vocabulary in six different textbooks

used in year 6, year 9, and English 7.

The specific research questions that are the basis of this research are as follows:

1. What are the vocabulary profiles of English language learning textbooks used in

Swedish schools?

2. To what extent do the vocabulary profiles of English language learning textbooks

follow the expected levels according to The Swedish National Agency of

Education?

2 Theoretical background

The area of second language (L2) learning is quite broad and well researched. This essay

therefore investigates a more specific area within L2 learning, namely L2 vocabulary

learning. What this entails will be explained in this section. This section also discusses

the CEFR and the use of textbooks in school.

2.1 Second language vocabulary learning

As Nation (2001:1) writes, learning vocabulary is only one of the goals when trying to

master a new language. It is, however, widely known that vocabulary plays a great role

in how well one can communicate in a language, since it is the lexical items that carry the

information and meaning of what one wishes to express (Read 2004:146). Read

(2004:147) writes about a distinction which is commonly used by researchers of L2

vocabulary learning: incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. Incidental learning

is usually described as what happens when a learner acquires vocabulary incidentally,

often as a “by-product of their main learning activity inside or outside the classroom”

(Read, 2004:147). Intentional learning is a direct form of vocabulary study, where the

learner’s goal is to learn new vocabulary. Nation (2001:232) argues that these two

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learning types work best when complementing each other and that the learner benefits the

most from message-focused activities, followed by a direct study of the vocabulary. This

can be applied to most textbooks, which provide texts for reading and grammar and

vocabulary exercises in addition to the texts. The texts are then the message-focused

activities, and the exercises are the direct study of the vocabulary.

Much of the research conducted on L2 vocabulary learning goes hand in hand with how

to teach vocabulary. The most common question asked is what words do you choose to

teach. Nation and Newton (1997:238) report that most research in this area focuses on

counting the most frequent words in the language. This means that the researchers have

listed the most frequently occurring and widely-used words. Teaching the high-frequency

words ensures that the learner gets the largest possible proportion of the running words

that are used in both spoken and written texts (Nation, 2001:13). Read (2004:148) claims

that learners of English benefit from learning the 2,000 most frequent words, since these

words account for around 80 percent of all written and spoken text.

2.2 Learning words

2.2.1 Knowing a word

In order to study the learning of words, it is essential to establish what it means to know

a word. Laufer (1997:141) lists a few features that are commonly said to be necessary to

have knowledge of in order to know a word. These features include: the word’s form, its

structure, the syntactic pattern of the word in a sentence, its meaning, its lexical relations

with other words, and common collocations. In order to know the word cat, one should

for example know the spelling (c-a-t) and pronunciation (/kat/), that the word is a noun,

that the most basic meaning of the word is a domesticated carnivorous mammal, that

synonyms for the word can be feline or kitty, and that common collocations are cat flap,

big cat and stray cat. Nation (2001: 27) combines these features into three categories:

form, meaning, and use. Although the ideal would be to be familiar with all of these

features, Laufer (1997:142) states that L2 learners may often only have partial knowledge

of a word’s different features. Knowing only a few of the word’s features can cause

problems for the learner, such as that the learner only recognizes the word in certain

contexts, or that the learner struggles to use the word productively.

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2.2.2 Vocabulary size

In the area of L2 vocabulary learning, a commonly asked question is: “How much

vocabulary does an L2 learner need?”. Nation and Waring (1997:6) attempt to answer

this question by starting out with how many words the English language consists of. The

answer is unfortunately not that simple. A language is continually changing, new words

are being added, old ones get new meanings and others fall into disuse. Researchers have

nevertheless narrowed it down by looking at the words in the largest dictionary of the

English language (Nation & Waring, 1997:7), and the end result is that there are around

54,000 word families in the English language.

The next step in the attempt to answer how much vocabulary a L2 learner needs is to

determine how many words a native speaker of English knows, as this can give some sort

of indication as to what L2 learners might want to strive for. This too is a question without

an easy answer. A native speaker’s vocabulary size depends on several factors, such as

age, education and profession. Nation (2001:9) claims, however, based on several studies

conducted in the 1990’s, that an educated adult native speaker of English has a vocabulary

size of around 20,000 word families.

How much vocabulary an L2 learner needs is of course based on what the learner needs

it for. Milton (2009:240) states that a beginner requires a minimum of around 2,000 to

3,000 words in order to be able to communicate independently in authentic language

situations. As mentioned earlier, Read (2004:148) claims that the first 2,000 most

frequent words make up around 80 percent of all written and spoken text. To reach a level

of real fluency in English, the number of different words needed is about 10,000 (ibid).

Nation and Hirsh (1992) conducted a study that investigated how much vocabulary was

needed in order to read unsimplified texts for pleasure. Their result showed that in order

to have a 95% comprehension of the text, which is said to be needed in order to get an

adequate comprehension of a text, the reader would need to know around 5,000 word

families (ibid, 1992:689-690). This is just one way of determining how much vocabulary

is needed. However, learners with the need to be able to read for example academic texts

would presumably need to know more than 5,000 word families.

Webb and Rodgers (2009:1) conducted a study similar to Nation and Hirsh’s, but instead

of investigating texts, Webb and Rodgers investigated the lexical coverage of movies.

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Their result showed that the vocabulary size needed for a 95 percent comprehension of

the language was the 3,000 most frequent word families. This can be valuable information

for Swedish teachers to know, since movies are great sources of L2 aural input in

countries where English is not the second language (ibid).

Stæhr (2008:140) suggests that the general aim for an L2 learner should be to know

around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. This is the number of word families needed in order

to be able to read authentic texts, and to do so without hindrance of unknown vocabulary

(ibid). This could therefore be considered as an aim that students in Sweden should strive

for to have at the end of upper secondary school.

2.2.3 Learnability factors

What also affects the learning of words are several aspects concerning the grammatical

features of the words. Nation (2001:23) claims that “[d]ifferent words have different

learning burdens”. These learning burdens are based on the amount of effort that is

required to learn a word. Some words require little effort. Others require a lot of effort.

The learning burden of a word is decided based on how familiar the learner is with the

word’s features and patterns, either from their first language, another language that they

know, or from previous knowledge that the learner has from the second language (Nation

2001:24). The words adverb, bikini, and broccoli would for example be considered to

have a low learning burden for learners of English with Swedish as their first language,

since the words are both spelled the same and have the same meaning, in both languages.

Not unlike Nation’s “learning burden”, but somewhat more extensively, Laufer

(1997:142-153) discusses a word’s learnability. Laufer (1997:142) claims that there is a

set of factors that affects whether a word is considered easy or difficult in terms of

learning. These factors are divided into seven categories: pronunciation, orthography,

length, morphology, synformy, grammar, and semantic features. They are, like Nation

(2001:24) claims, to a great part affected by the learner’s first language. For example, a

word containing phonemes or combinations of phonemes that are different or non-

existent in the learner’s first language (L1), might be perceived as a very difficult word

to pronounce and learn (Laufer, 1997:142). The word judgement (/ˈdʒʌdʒ.mənt/) could

for example be considered a word that is difficult to learn for Swedish learners of English.

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One of the reason for this is that the letter j in Swedish is pronounced /j/, as opposed to

the English pronunciation /dʒ/.

For someone who teaches a second or foreign language, it can be very important to be

aware of these learnability factors (Laufer, 1997:153). A word’s learning burden should

for example be considered when introducing new words during a lesson. Easier words

can be introduced in larger numbers than more difficult words, since they require less

practice.

2.3 Categorizing words

2.3.1 Word families

Within the area of vocabulary learning in general, and not only in second languages, the

idea of categorizing words into word families is important since it helps to systematize

vocabulary teaching (Bauer & Nation, 1993:253). A word family is made up of words

that derive from the same word base, in other words a headword (e.g. analyze), the word’s

inflected forms (analyzes, analyzed, analyzing), and the word’s closely related derived

forms (analysis, analytic, analytical) (Nation, 2001:8). The words are gathered into what

are called families because it is presumed that if the learner knows one of the words in

the family, it is probable that they understand the other words as well. This is however

based on how well the learner understands the effect of derivational affixes and how these

can change a word (Bauer & Nation, 1993:253). Considering that learners have different

amounts of knowledge about prefixes and suffixes, a word family can contain more or

fewer words. For a less proficient learner, a word family might only consist of a few

words. As the learner’s level of knowledge develops, more words can be added to the

word family (Nation, 2001:8).

Nation (2001:8) claims that these word families can greatly reduce the learning burden,

if one understands how to work with them. Instead of spending time learning and teaching

each word and its meaning by itself, one can focus on the base word of the word family

and briefly look at the inflected and derived forms of the base word. A text with a small

number of word families could therefore be easier to understand than a text containing a

large number of word families, since each word family would thereby be more likely to

contain a higher number of words. This however, depends on the learner’s knowledge of

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the different base words, which can make it difficult to use a generalizable measurement.

Furthermore, one cannot assume that learners understand the derivative forms of the base

word, which then implicates their understanding of the words belonging to the same word

family (Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002:163). By teaching about word’s inflected and

derived forms, teachers can save a lot of work and at the same time create an

understanding of how words are connected to each other (Bauer & Nation, 1993:264).

2.3.2 Word frequency

In addition to studying how much vocabulary an L2 learner needs, there has been much

research done concerning what vocabulary an L2 learner needs. Nation and Waring

(1997:13) suggest that the learners should in the first place focus on the high frequency

words of the English language. This is a relatively small group of words which are all

frequently spoken and written in a large variety of contexts (Nation, 2001:13).

Several researchers have over the years generated lists of the most frequently used words

in the English language. These lists can aid both learners directly or teachers and textbook

writers by providing what are considered the most essential words for learners of English

(Brezina & Gablasova, 2013:1). How frequently used the words in a text are can also help

determine whether the text is appropriate to use as teaching material in the L2 learning

context. A text containing a large number of words that are not among the 2,000 most

frequent word families in the English language, might not be suitable for younger

learners, whose focus should be on learning the words that they have the most use of

(Nation, 2001:13, Sökmen, 1997:139). One of the most famous lists is the General

Service List, which was published by Michael West in 1953 (Nation & Waring, 1997:13).

The General Service List (GSL) contains the 2,000 most frequent headwords, based on a

five million word written corpus. It is not only the frequency of the words that are

measured in this list, but also the range of the words. A word’s range is defined by how

many different texts and subcorpora it occurs in. This means that the words in the GSL

are not only the most frequent ones, but also the words that appears in the widest range

of texts (Nation, 2001:16). Studies show that the words on this list cover around 82% of

the running words in academic texts, which Nation (2001:16) considers to be a great

reason for spending considerable time teaching these particular words to L2 learners of

English.

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As the name of the General Service List suggests, the words are very general. In extension

to this list, there are lists which are systematically restricted to specific topics or language

usage. There is for example the Academic Word List, published by Averil Coxhead in

1998, which contains 570 word families in addition to the General Service List. The added

words are ones that are reasonably frequent within academic texts (Coxhead, 1998:1).

This kind of specialized vocabulary can be of great importance for L2 learners that aim

for academic studies in English (Nation, 2001:17).

Since the GSL was created over half a decade ago and therefore contains words that might

be outdated and not as frequently used in today’s English language, some more modern

frequency lists are based on the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA). Nation (2012) has compiled the BNC/COCA

word family lists, which contain the most frequent word families of the English language.

The first two lists, each containing 1,000 word families, are a more updated alternative to

the GSL (Nation, 2012).

2.4 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

The CEFR works as a guideline and provides a common ground for the elaboration of

different language curricula, syllabi and examinations, among other things. The main aim

of the CEFR is to help European professional modern language teachers, and others who

work in the field, to overcome the communicative barrier that arises as a result of the

different educational systems that exist in Europe (Council of Europe, 2001:1). Kurteš

and Saville (2008:2) write that the CEFR has its foundation stones in the Council of

Europe’s Modern Language Project and was the culmination of research and work done

in the 1970’s. The CEFR in its entirety was published in 2001 and it was especially the

six reference levels that are used to describe language proficiency that became widely

accepted (ibid).

The purpose of the CEFR is not to tell teachers how languages should be taught and

neither does it recommend different language teaching methods or approaches over

another (Parmenter & Byram, 2012:3). It rather raises questions in order to bring

problems and perspectives into focus (Council of Europe, 2001). Figueras (2012:478)

writes that one of the main aims which the authors of the CEFR had in mind was to

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encourage teachers and learners to reflect on questions regarding how and why people

learn languages.

Besides being a common basis for language practitioners all over Europe, the CEFR also

provides something called the Common Reference Levels (Council of Europe, 2001:21),

which can be used to describe a learner’s proficiency level of a language based on four

skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking. The levels are divided into basic user (A),

independent user (B) and proficient user (C). These three levels are then each divided into

two more levels, resulting in a scale from A1 to C2 (Council of Europe, 2001:23). Each

level describes what a learner is able to do. A learner at the A1 level, for example, “[c]an

understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the

satisfaction of needs of a concrete type” (Council of Europe, 2001:24) (see Table 1).

Table 1. Common Reference Levels (Council of Europe, 2001:24).

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Hulstijn (2007:2) problematizes these levels by claiming that a learner can be at different

levels depending on what skill is measured. A learner’s ability to speak could reach one

level, at the same time as the learner’s ability to write reaches another level. Hulstijn

(2007:3) suggests that different scales on the different levels would provide a more

accurate grading of the learner’s language proficiency.

2.4.1 The English Profile Programme

The English Profile Programme (EPP) was created by the University of Cambridge,

supported by the Council of Europe, as a way of providing a set of Reference Level

Descriptions (RLDs) for the six levels of language proficiency that can be found in the

CEFR (Salamoura & Saville, 2010:101). The CEFR levels are applicable to all foreign

languages, but the EPP is specifically created to describe what aspects of the English

language are learnt at each level (English Profile, 2015c). A main focus of the EPP is

therefore to identify the “criterial features” for each of the CEFR levels, in order to

distinguish the differences between the levels (Salamoura & Saville, 2010:102). These

criterial features are linguistic properties of the language, such as phonology,

morphology, and syntax, which can serve as a basis when estimating a learner’s language

proficiency (ibid).

Based on the research about the RLDs and the criterial features for the different levels,

the EPP has launched two online tools that help teachers and educationalists to learn what

vocabulary and grammar are suitable for teaching at the different CEFR levels (English

Profile, 2015c). The first tool is called the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP), which

contains information about words, as well as phrases, idioms and collocation, and at what

CEFR level these are considered to be at (English Profile, 2015a). Table 2 shows

examples of words that are included at the different levels. The second tool is called the

English Grammar Profile, and it provides information about at which CEFR level

different grammatical forms and meanings are used. These tools are created based on

information found in the Cambridge Learning Corpus and the Cambridge English Corpus

about what vocabulary and grammar learners tend to use at the different proficiency levels

(English Profile, 2015b).

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Table 2. Example of words at the different CEFR levels

A1 Baby, make, funny, outside

A2 Calendar, hold, great, long

B1 Ability, enormous, retire, typically

B2 Comparison, exploit, least, ultimate

C1 Detached, gadget, aid, notably

C2 Dubious, intruder, snap, vitally

2.4.2 CEFR levels in Sweden

The Swedish National Agency for Education uses a number of what are called “steps” to

systematize the foreign language education in Sweden (Skolverket, n.d.a). Each of the

seven steps requires the learner to reach a certain level of knowledge, whether the

language is English, Spanish, or German. These steps are defined so that the proficiency

of one language is equivalent to that of another at the same step. The level of knowledge

required at each step is based both on the what is needed and expected from the

educational system, as well as the CEFR levels (ibid). The reason for connecting the steps

with the CEFR levels is so that Swedish students who continue to study in another

European country can describe their language proficiency with an international level as

opposed to their Swedish grade.

The comparison made between the steps and the CEFR levels is based on the knowledge

requirements for the grade E, which is the lowest passing grade. This entails that a student

who reaches a higher grade could also belong to a higher CEFR level than what is

equivalent to the step the student in question is studying (Skolverket, n.d.a). Due to the

fact that there are seven steps in the Swedish language education and only six CEFR

levels, The Swedish National Agency for Education uses the further divided levels of

A1.1, A1.2, B1.1, and so on. This is also based on the fact that students taking Step 1

already are on a slightly higher level than A1, and students taking the English 7 course

are not expected to have the proficiency needed to be as high as at the C1 level

(Skolverket, n.d.a). The sub-levels are briefly described in the CEFR (Council of Europe,

2001:32), but since the EVP does not make a distinction between these sub-levels, the

analysis of this essay has focused on the base levels of the CEFR.

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The CEFR level equivalent to Step 2 in the subject of English, which is taught in the sixth

grade in Swedish schools, is A2.1. Step 4, taught in the ninth grade, equals the CEFR

level B1.1. Step 7, also called English 7 and usually taught in the third year of upper

secondary school, equals the CEFR level B2.2 (Skolverket, n.d.a) (see Table 3). As seen

in Table 3, only grade 6, grade 9, and English 5-7 are specified, which is one of the reasons

why the textbooks analyzed in this essay belong to these particular grades.

Table 3. CEFR levels at each step and grade in Sweden (Skolverket, n.d.a)

Step Grade CEFR level

1 A1.2

2 6 A2.1

3 A2.2

4 9 B1.1

5 Eng 5 B1.2

6 Eng 6 B2.1

7 Eng 7 B2.2

2.5 English language teaching textbooks

There is a controversy regarding English language teaching (ELT) textbooks, according

to Sheldon (1987:1). He writes that language learning is far too complex an area to be

satisfactorily pre-packaged into teaching materials such as textbooks. No single textbook

can work in all teaching situations, which means that they frequently have to be

supplemented by other materials (Harwood, 2014:1). However, the amount of labor that

would be needed if teachers were to produce all the material used in the classroom, makes

textbooks quite a simple choice to use after all (Sheldon, 1987:2). Even though they are

seen as labor-saving tools, many teachers feel that textbooks are only a poor compromise

between what they would wish to teach and what is economically viable (Sheldon,

1988:237).

Published textbooks are however generally considered to have more credibility than

teacher-generated material, due to the public endorsement that a printed cover gets

(Sheldon, 1988:238). This does not mean that textbooks should not be evaluated. In

countries like Sweden, where educational materials are not being inspected by, in this

case, The Swedish National Agency of Education, all the more responsibility falls on the

teachers to evaluate whether the textbooks are suitable or not (Skolverket, 2015). It is not

clear, however, how this happens in practice. Englund (2006:24) claims that few schools

14

in Sweden have pre-settled criteria that the textbooks they buy should be evaluated by.

The schools that do have some sort of criteria that the textbooks should meet explained

that their economy played a role in their choice, along with how well the textbooks met

the general criteria in the syllabi, and if the level was appropriate for the course and the

students (ibid). How they determined if the level of the textbook was appropriate or not,

is not clear.

It is therefore the purpose of this study to evaluate textbooks used in EFL classrooms in

Sweden. The aim of the study is specifically to investigate whether the vocabulary levels

in the textbooks are appropriate, as determined by the CEFR and The Swedish National

Agency of Education.

3 Methodology

3.1 Material

The main material that serves as a basis for this study is made up of six different

textbooks. These textbooks were chosen because they are published by two of the

Swedish educational material publishers that are part of Svenska Läromedel (n.d.): Liber

and Gleerups. Svenska Läromedel is an organization that strives to aid teachers and

educationalists by providing educational material that meet their policy about quality. By

using textbooks from two different publishers, the results are more generalizable than if

only one publisher was represented. Another reason for choosing these particular

publishers is that their textbooks are commonly used in Swedish schools, which I know

by own experiences, and hence used in actual L2 learning classrooms.

As the textbooks were written with the Swedish school system in mind, they can be

expected to follow the Swedish syllabus for the subject of English. Since the aim of this

study is to investigate whether the vocabulary levels in the textbooks follow the expected

levels according to The Swedish National Agency of Education, it would not serve the

purpose if the textbooks which were analyzed were published in other countries. The

textbooks were also chosen based on the year they were published. All textbooks used in

this study were published after the year 2011, which ensures that they follow the current

syllabus for the subject of English.

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The textbooks are specified to be used in grade 6, grade 9, and for students taking the

English 7 course. These years were chosen in order to be able to compare the vocabulary

profiles with the CEFR levels, in textbooks which are intended for three different years.

As mentioned before, the CEFR levels which The Swedish National Agency for

Education use to describe the proficiency that the students are assumed to have at different

years are only specified to grade 6, grade 9 and English 5-7. This is one of the reasons for

focusing the study on the chosen years. Another reason is that each of these years

represent the final year of the different school “levels” that are in Sweden. Year 6 is the

final year of middle school. The students in year 6 are around the age of 12 and are

expected to be at the CEFR level A2. Year 9 is the final year of secondary school. The

student in this year are around the age of 15 and expected to be at the level B1. The

English 7 course is the final course given at upper secondary school. The students are at

this point around the age of 18 and expected to be at the level B2.

3.2 Textbooks

Table 4 shows an overview of the information presented about each textbook in the

following chapter. The textbooks were not analyzed in their entirety and the explanation

for this can be found under 3.3.1 Data collection: Corpus, along with what chapters

(sometimes called units) and texts that were chosen to represent each textbook.

Table 4. General information about the textbooks

General information Year of

publication Publisher Pages Units (texts)

Happy Year 6 2011 Gleerups 99 10 (39) Happy Year 9 2013 Gleerups 144 6 (46) Viewpoints 3 2014 Gleerups 208 15 (15)

Good Stuff Gold A 2015 Liber 132 11 (55) Good Stuff Gold D 2014 Liber 144 8 (49)

Blueprint C 2011 Liber 264 9 (44)

3.2.1 Year 6 textbooks

The Happy Textbook Year 6

This textbook was published by Gleerups, in 2011. The three authors, Sutcliffe, Thunman,

and Timling, are either former English teachers or active ones (Gleerups, n.d.). The

textbook is 99 pages long and divided into ten units with its own themes, such as

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superheroes, inventions and love. Each unit is further divided into four texts, three A-C

level texts with increasing difficulty and one additional text. The additional text is part of

a story which continues throughout the textbook, with the purpose of encouraging the

students to read for pleasure. Each unit also focuses on a specific part of grammar and

phrases using this grammar. Besides the text itself, the chapters also consist of pictures

and illustrations, as well as word translation lists covering the most difficult words in the

texts.

The textbook is described on the Gleerups webpage (Gleerups, n.d.) as a teaching aid that

helps students reach the goals in the syllabus for English, through communicative

exercises and engaging texts.

Good Stuff Gold A

Good Stuff Gold A is the first book in a series of four books, covering the years 6-9. It

was published by Liber in 2015 as a renewed version of the series which was called Good

Stuff. It is written by Coombs, Bayard, Hagvärn, and Johansson. This textbook is 132

pages long and has eleven units with different themes. The themes are for example

animals, food, and sports. Each unit has between two and eight texts in them, and in

addition to the themes, they all focus on different parts of grammar. The texts are labeled

either green or yellow, with the yellow texts being on a slightly higher level compared to

the green texts. All chapters include word translation lists, pictures, and a few reading

comprehension questions about the content in the text.

The Good Stuff Gold series is according to the Liber website (Liber, 2017) written with

the syllabus for English as its basis, and that is therefore gives the teacher a secure

foundation to fall back on when planning lessons.

3.2.2 Year 9 textbooks

The Happy Textbook Year 9

The Happy Textbook Year 9 belongs to the same textbook series as Happy Textbook Year

6, and is also published by Gleerups. The second edition of this textbook was published

in 2013 and written by Peterson, Sutcliffe, Johansson, and Bergman. It is 144 pages long,

and structured in a similar way as the Happy Textbook Year 6. It has six units, each

containing seven different texts. Six of the texts in each unit are labeled A-C depending

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on the difficulty, along with one introductory text. The themes of the units are for example

music, countries and American history. Each chapter in the textbook offers a word

translation list, pictures, and sometimes additional trivia connected to the topic of the

chapter.

It is written with the goals in the English syllabus in mind, and even contains a checklist

of the goals that can be met by using this textbook (Gleerups, n.d.).

Good Stuff Gold D

Good Stuff Gold D is the last book in the series, aimed to suit year 9. It was published by

Liber in 2014 and it is written by the same authors as Good Stuff Gold A. It is 144 pages

long, divided into eight units with between four to eight texts in each unit. The texts are,

no differently than the other books in the series, sorted by themes and are labeled either

green or yellow. The themes are for example living abroad, animal rights, and justice.

Besides the texts, the chapters contain pictures, as well as word translation lists.

3.2.3 English 7 textbooks

Viewpoints 3

Viewpoints 3 is designed to be used for English 7, both at upper secondary and municipal

adult education. It was published by Gleerups in 2014 and it is written by Gustafsson and

Wivast. It has 208 pages, divided into 15 chapters with five different themes. The themes

are “Visions”, “Along the road”, “Illusions”, “Confinement”, and “Back to the future”

(Gustafsson & Wivast, 2014:4-5). Each chapter begins with a few questions labeled

“Before reading”, which aim to make the readers curious about the topic. With every text

there is a word translation list, as well as pictures. The chapters are followed by exercises

which focus on language, production, and writing.

The textbook is described to be suitable for all students taking the English 7 course, no

matter what level of knowledge they are at (Gleerups, n.d.). It is also described to be

engaging with its large variety and captivating texts.

Blueprint C

Blueprint C is the last book in a series of three, aimed for the upper secondary school.

Blueprint C is used for English 7. It was published by Liber in 2011, and was written by

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McKay, Brodin, Clayton, and Webster. It is 264 pages long, consisting of nine units. Each

unit has its own theme and in many of the units there are texts that focus on music and/or

listening skills. The themes are for example literary criticism, postmodernism, and

feminist criticism. There are no word translation lists in connection with the texts.

However, the most difficult words in the texts have a short explanation in English. There

are some pictures in most chapters, but not in all. Each unit is followed by exercises

focusing on different parts of the texts. There are reading comprehension exercises,

speaking exercises, and writing exercises. There are also exercises focusing on grammar

and vocabulary.

This textbook is especially written to meet the syllabus goal of learning about other

cultures and different ways of life (Liber, 2017). It is described as a teaching aid that gives

the teacher the freedom to choose chapters and texts as they go along. The grammar aspect

of the texts is separated from the text itself, meaning that the teacher can choose when to

focus on it.

3.3 Method

As a means to try to answer the research questions, I have chosen to gather quantitative

data in the form of corpora. A quantitative research method such as a corpus-based

analysis serves the purpose of providing a numerical result, which can be used to show

statistics on for example how much of the vocabulary in the English language learning

textbooks that belongs to the different CEFR levels. However, quantitative data only

provides numbers and statistics, which is why the more qualitative method of lexical

analysis is used as well. The lexical analysis provides a more in-depth investigation of

how the data could be interpreted.

3.3.1 Data collection: Corpus

A corpus is a collection of authentic texts, that can be used to find different kinds of

patterns within a language (Gotti & Giannoni, 2014:9). The corpus by itself is only data,

which means that search tools are needed in order to make something useful of the corpus

(Wray & Bloomer, 2012:206). The search tools used in this study are called Text

Inspector (n.d.), which is based on the EVP, as well as Compleat Lexical Tutor (n.d.a).

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The corpus used in this study are made up of texts taken from the six textbooks described

earlier, as well as a number of news articles. Since no such corpus existed beforehand, I

had to create my own text collection. The optimal corpus would consist of all texts in the

textbooks (Nelson, 2010:54), but due to limited time, only six chapters/units from each

book were included. For more details about what specific chapters and texts that were

used, see Table 5 below. In the textbooks which have texts with different difficulties in

the units (e.g. Happy Textbook Year 6 and Happy Textbook Year 9), one text of each

difficulty was included in the corpus. The chapters were chosen by their placement in the

textbooks, two from the beginning, two from the middle and two in the end. The reason

for this was to represent any increase in difficulty that might occur towards the later

chapters, as opposed to the chapters in the beginning of the books. The corpus of the six

textbooks contain in total a number of almost 53,000 words. For more details concerning

the number of words from each textbook, see Table 7 in 4.1 Lexical Diversity.

Table 5. Chapters and texts used for the corpus

Corpora content Chapters (texts)

Happy Year 6 1 (1-4), 2 (1-4), 5 (1-4), 6 (1-4), 9 (1-4), 10 (1-3) Happy Year 9 1 (2,3,5), 2 (2,3,5), 3 (2,3,5), 4 (2,3,5), 5 (2,3,5), 6 (2,3,5) Viewpoints 3 1 (1-2), 3 (1-2), 5 (2-3) Good Stuff Gold A 1 (1), 2 (1,5,6), 5 (1,4), 6 (1,3,4), 10 (1,3), 11 (1) Good Stuff Gold D 1 (1,5,9), 2 (1,4,6), 4 (1,4), 5 (1,4,6), 7 (1,5,6) 8 (1,5) Blueprint C 1 (1,3,7), 2 (1,4,9), 5 (1), 6 (1), 8 (1), 9 (1,2,3)

Furthermore, only the text sections of the chapters were included in the corpus. Some

textbooks provide exercises in addition to the texts, such as reading comprehension,

grammar exercises, and listening comprehension, but not all of them. In order to represent

the textbooks as fairly as possible, these exercises have been excluded. By only including

the texts, the corpus will all be built on the same type of language, which is used for

reading. The language used in the different kinds of exercises is often instructional, and

in order to make sure that the textbooks are represented in an equal way, these have been

excluded from the corpus.

The collections of texts, formed into a corpus, are necessary in order to have data to

analyze (Moon, 2010:197). It would therefore by difficult to conduct this study without

using corpus linguistics as a method. The procedure of forming the corpus began with the

texts being scanned from the physical textbooks, in order to be able to make the texts

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computer-readable. The scanned texts were then proofread and corrected to ensure that

there were no errors or differences between the textbooks and the scanned texts. The texts

were then analyzed by using the three different search tools (see Table 6 below for an

overview of which tool that was used for which part of the analysis). The texts were

divided into what school year they are used at, as well as at what part of the textbooks

they appear in. The texts were not divided by which publisher they belong to. For

example, the first chapters in the textbooks for year 6 consists of texts from both Happy

Textbook Year 6 and Good Stuff Gold A. No division was made since it was of no interest

for this study to investigate the differences between the publishers.

One problem that I encountered when analyzing the texts to assign the CEFR levels to

the words was that the Text Inspector was only able to process words belonging to British

English. This meant that quite a large number of words in the texts written in American

English turned up as unlisted in the results. The EVP however, can process both British

English and American English, but only one word at the time. The American English

words that came out as unlisted in the Text Inspector were therefore manually checked in

the EVP instead and added to the Text Inspector results.

3.3.2 Lexical analysis

The main methodology used in the study is lexical analysis. Based on the corpus, the

lexical items in the texts were analyzed and classified according to several schemes, in

order to establish the vocabulary profiles. The lexical items were classified by: 1) the

occurrence of lexical diversity, 2) how many word families there are in the texts, 3) how

frequent the words are, 4) what CEFR levels the words belong to. All of these different

aspects of the vocabulary play a role in how easy or difficult the words are to learn, and

along with that, at what level the texts are appropriate to use.

Firstly, the count of types (different words in the text) and tokens (total number of words

in the text) can be used to calculate the type/token ratio (TTR). This tells us the lexical

diversity of the text, by dividing the number of types with the number of tokens (Richards,

1987:201). For example, a text in which all the words are different types, the TTR would

be 1.00. In a text with a low type count, the TTR would be much lower. A text with a

high TTR will be considered more difficult, since it contains a wider range of vocabulary

(Text Inspector, n.d.). However, when analyzing texts of different lengths, the TTR can

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generate somewhat unreliable results. As the number of tokens in a text increases, the

TTR will drop (Kormos & Dénes, 2004:153).

By counting the different word families in the texts, one can get similar information as

with the TTR, which is the lexical diversity of the text. The tool used for counting the

word families in the texts was the Compleat Lexical Tutor (n.d.a).

The Compleat Lexical Tutor was also used for calculating the frequency of the words in

the texts. The tool provides numbers of how many of the tokens that belong to which

frequency category, from the first 1,000 most frequent words to the 25th 1,000 most

frequent words.

Lastly, the CEFR levels of the vocabulary are determined, based on the EVP. This aspect

of the analysis connects to what The Swedish National Agency for Education suggests to

be the appropriate level for students at the different years. The statistics over the number

of words belonging to the different CEFR levels gives an idea of how much of the texts

the students assumably understand and how much of the texts that lies above their

knowledge. As discussed earlier, research has shown that there is a need to understand

approximately 95% of the text to have an adequate comprehension (Nation & Hirsh,

1992:689-690). If the percentage of the types in a text belonging to levels is higher than

the appropriate one goes beyond 5%, it can be a sign that the text is too difficult for the

students. It can however be too narrow to use these numbers alone in order to decide the

suitability of the textbooks, which is why the aspects above (lexical diversity, word

frequency, and word families) are included in the analysis.

As further aid to decide whether the vocabulary in the textbooks belongs to the

appropriate level, a text collection made up of news articles has also been used. The news

articles were collected from The Guardian’s website (2017), and contain a total of 6560

tokens. The knowledge requirements for the grade E in the syllabus for English 7 states

that the student should be able to understand the basic content in advanced written English

(Skolverket, n.d.b). The news articles are good examples of advanced written English,

and are therefore compared to the textbooks used in the English 7 course. They are

compared within the areas of word frequency and CEFR levels, and the reason for this is

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that these two particular areas gives to most information about the difficulty of the

vocabulary.

3.3.3 English Vocabulary Profile, Text Inspector and Compleat Lexical Tutor

The search tools used for the lexical analysis part of the study are called the English

Vocabulary Profile (EVP), Text Inspector (TI), and Compleat Lexical Tutor (CLT). The

EVP is a corpora-based search tool, using the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC) and the

Cambridge English Corpus as their basis. The CLC “is a collection of several hundred

thousand examination scripts written by learners from all over the world” (English

Profile, 2015c) as well as other sources providing information about what English is used

by learners at the different levels. The EVP is first and foremost created to give

information about words and at what CEFR level they are mostly used, i.e. how difficult

they are considered to be (ibid). In other words, the difficulty of the words have been

decided by the level at which they are most frequently used. Words categorized as A1

level are words that learners considered to be at that same proficiency level know. In

addition to the CEFR levels, the EVP also provides information about for example

grammar and usage of the words, their definition, and examples of how the words appear

in the CLC.

The Text Inspector is a search tool based on the EVP, but in contrast to the EVP that only

offers the possibility to search for a single word at a time, the TI can process a text up to

10,000 words long in one go (Text Inspector, n.d.). As well as labeling each word with

its CEFR level, the TI also shows statistics of how many types and tokens that belong to

each of the levels (see example Figure 1). The TI also offers tools that show the key

statistics in the text, such as sentence count, types and tokens count, and TTR.

As can be seen in Figure 1, some words are labeled Unlisted. These words are either

personal names, geographical names, numbers, or words that are missing from the EVP

database.

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Figure 1. Text Inspector search result (textinspector.com)

The third tool, Compleat Lexical Tutor, provides a large variety of tools that can for

example look for concordance, word frequency, and word families in a text. The tool used

for this study is called Vocabprofile, which breaks the text down to word frequency based

on the British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English

(COCA). The result shows how many words in the text that belong to the 1,000 most

frequent words, the 2,000 most frequent words, and so on (Compleat Lexical Tutor,

n.d.b). The different frequencies are labeled K-1, K-2, K-3, and so on, where K-1

represents the first 1,000 most frequent words, K-2 represents the second 1,000 most

frequent words. The categories go all the way to K-25, which then represents the 25th

1,000 most frequent words. However, since only a very small number of words in the

textbooks used in this study belong to the categories above K-5, the words that belong to

the categories K-6 to K-25 have been added together in the result section.

The Compleat Lexical Tutor also calculates the number of word families that can be found

in the texts, based on the BNC and COCA. As can be seen in Table 8 in 4.2 Word

Families, some words belong to the category Unlisted tokens, which means that the words

either could not be found in the BNC and COCA corpora, or they are personal or

geographical names and therefore do not belong in a word family.

Table 6 below gives an overview of which search tool that has been used for which

analytic purpose/purposes.

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Table 6. Search tools and their purpose

Search tool Analytic purpose

English Vocabulary Profile CEFR levels

Text Inspector CEFR levels, types/tokens count, TTR

Compleat Lexical Tutor Word families, word frequency

3.3.4 Validity and reliability

It is important to question the validity and reliability of research and studies, in order to

determine if they are trustworthy. Validity refers to whether the study investigates what

it intends to investigate (Winter, 2000:2). This study is valid since it investigates the

vocabulary profiles in English language learning textbooks used in Sweden, by using

tools made for this specific reason. The study also intends to investigate if these

vocabulary profiles follow the expected levels, which is done by comparing how the EVP

classifies the vocabulary with what The Swedish National Agency of Education suggests

are the expected levels for each specific year that the texts are used at.

However, the validity might be questioned due to the fact that only a certain number of

chapters from each textbook have been used to represent the entire textbook. This issue

is the reason for choosing chapters from the beginning, the middle, and the end of the

textbooks. It is possible that the difficulty of the texts can alter from the beginning of the

textbooks, to the end. By analyzing the chapters from the different parts of the textbooks,

the risk of representing only one difficulty has been minimized.

The reliability of a study is determined by how well it could be reproduced without

altering the results. The measurements should be stable, even if someone else were to

conduct the same study (Winter, 2000:3). Since this study is based on methods which are

to a great extent objective, the reliability is higher compared to a study based on

qualitative methods that often are more subjective. The texts and the corpus, as well as

the search tools, will not look different even if someone else would use them to reproduce

the study.

3.3.5 Ethical issues

Researchers are expected to be truthful and open about their study, which means that there

should not be any altered or false information presented (Denscombe, 2010:62). This

study is presented as truthfully as possible, which includes information about problems

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and limitations. This could for example concern the presentation of the results, where

everything that is relevant is presented, even if it shows an unwanted result.

Another ethical issue concerning this study is the copyright law, protecting the textbooks

from being used for public research without the publisher’s approval (Denscombe,

2010:76). However, this study only handles the texts for private use and does not present

the texts in their entirety, which means it does not violate the copyright law.

3.3.6 Problems and limitations

There have been some problems while compiling the corpus. As Wray and Bloomer

(2012:212) writes, there are a few potential problems when compiling your own corpus,

which for example is the fact that one needs to convert large amount of material so that it

is in computer-readable form. I did this by scanning the texts, which unfortunately is not

100 percent accurate. This led to the need to proofread all the texts, which also is not

entirely infallible.

The corpus is also part of the limitations with this study, since it is not large enough to be

representative (Wray & Bloomer, 2012:213). More time would be needed in order to

process the entirety of the books, and preferably a larger number of textbooks.

4 Results and Analysis

This section contains the results and analysis of the corpus data that has been collected.

All textbooks are analyzed and compared together, based on the different aspects

mentioned under the heading 3.2.2 Lexical Analysis, which are Lexical Diversity, Word

Families, Word Frequency and CEFR Levels. These four parts of the analysis all bring

different input to the investigation of what level the vocabulary in the textbooks is at.

4.1 Lexical Diversity

The number of tokens, types and the TTR in the six textbooks is shown in Table 7 below.

As can be seen in the table, there is no big difference between the chapters in the textbooks

used in year 6, in terms of types. However, the number of tokens in the last chapters is

slightly higher than the others, which results in a lower TTR. The same goes for the

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chapters in both the textbooks for year 9 and English 7, where the TTR is slightly lower

in both the middle and last chapters, compared to the first chapters. Compared between

the textbooks at the three different levels, there is no noticeable difference regarding the

total TTR.

Table 7. Types, tokens and TTR in all textbooks

Textbooks First chapters Middle chapters Last chapters Total

Year 6 Tokens (n) 3606 4199 3076 10,881

Types (n) 1018 1035 956 2089

TTR (%) 0.28 0.25 0.31 0.19

Year 9 Tokens (n) 6783 6057 7440 20,280

Types (n) 1799 1549 1872 3721

TTR (%) 0.27 0.26 0.25 0.18

Eng 7 Tokens (n) 8419 7399 6211 22,030

Types (n) 2666 2064 1593 4634

TTR (%) 0.32 0.28 0.26 0.21

A lower TTR equals lower lexical diversity, which means that the texts in the last chapters

in all the textbooks contain words that are more often repeated than the words in the other

chapters (see Table 7). Since a text with high lexical diversity is considered more difficult

(Text Inspector, n.d.), it is notable that it is the chapters at the end of the books that are

less difficult. One would expect the last chapters of a textbook to be on a higher level,

since the students presumably have been learning English for longer by the time they

reach the end of the textbooks and therefore have a higher proficiency.

The reason for this decline in the TTR in the textbooks for year 6 could possibly be

because of the topics of the last chapters. The names of the chapters are: Horror,

Holidays, Love, and Christmas in New York. Two of the chapters share the topic of

holidays, which could mean that they contain the same word types. It could therefore be

a coincidence that the TTR is lower in the last chapters, and not necessarily a sign of less

difficult texts.

However, there is no such connection between the last chapters in the textbooks for either

year 9 or English 7, which could explain the decline in the TTR. The last chapters in the

textbooks for year 9 are called: Let’s Talk Love, Let’s Talk American History, War &

Peace, and Justice. The chapters at the end of the textbooks for English 7 are called:

Postcolonialism, Feminist Criticism, The Arrow of Time, and Hindsight. It could therefore

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be discussed whether this might be a deliberate choice made by the authors, as opposed

to a coincidence. Even so, considering the lengths of the texts, the decline in the TTR in

not large enough to have an apparent effect on the difficulty of the texts.

4.2 Word Families

In Table 8 below, the number of word families in all textbooks are presented. There is no

standard number of different tokens (i.e. types) belonging to each word family, which

means that some word families only consist of one token, while others consist of up to 20

types. The unlisted tokens are words such as personal names, geographical names, and

numbers, which do not belong to word families. However, function words such as

prepositions, pronouns, and articles, are by the CLT categorized in word families.

Due to a couple of different factors, there is no uncomplicated way of calculating how

many base words a learner needs to know in order to understand the majority of a text,

which could be used as a measurement of the difficulty of a text. The factors are the

different lengths of the texts, and the lack of a standard number of types belonging to each

word family.

Table 8. Word families in all textbooks

Textbooks First chapters Middle chapters Last chapters Total

Year 6 Word families (n) 701 708 656 1274

Tokens (n) 3606 4199 3076 10,881

Unlisted tokens (n) 297 273 304 874

Year 9 Word families (n) 1199 1063 1275 2184

Tokens (n) 6783 6057 7440 20,280

Unlisted tokens (n) 281 318 347 946

Eng 7 Word families (n) 1847 1410 1081 2762

Tokens (n) 8419 7399 6211 22,030

Unlisted tokens (n) 317 269 219 805

If one looks at the textbooks for year 6, one can see that yet again, and perhaps because

of the same reason as with the TTR, the last chapters are the ones that stand out (see Table

8). Although the last chapters have the highest number of tokens, the number of word

families is lower than the other chapters in the year 6 textbooks. The students would

therefore assumably need to know fewer base words at the end of the textbooks for year

6, than in the beginning and middle. As mentioned before, the reason for this might be

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that two of the chapters in the end of the textbooks for year 6 have similar topics. If there

are more words that are related, they are also more likely to belong to the same word

families.

The textbooks for year 9 show little difference between the chapters. The number of word

families in relation to text length is quite similar between the chapters. The middle

chapters for example, contain fewer word families, but at the same time contain fewer

tokens. Furthermore, if one looks at the number of word families in the total of the year

9 textbooks, there are 910 more than in the total of the year 6 textbooks. This clearly

shows that the students need to know more words in year 9 than in year 6. However,

without any references saying how many word families a student should know, it is

difficult to say whether this increase is suitable or not.

In the textbooks for English 7, there is no chapter that stands out from the others

concerning the relation between the number of word families and text length (see Table

8). The longer texts contain a higher number of word families. If one looks at the number

of word families in total, there are more than twice as many in the textbooks for English

7 than in the textbooks for year 6. This shows that the students are expected to have at

least doubled their vocabulary from year 6 to English 7.

The results in general show a consistency between text length and the number of word

families. They also show that the higher-level textbooks require the students to know

more base words. However, there are a few aspects of these results that need to be brought

to attention. Firstly, it relies on the idea that the students have knowledge about all ways

a word can be derived or inflected. The understanding of a base word does not in all cases

imply an understanding of all other words belonging to the same word family (Nation,

2001:8). Secondly, since some word families do contain quite a few more words than

others, the lack of understanding for some base words would have a more extensive

consequence of the overall text comprehension.

None of the textbooks provide exercises or information about the morphology of the

words, which would be beneficial for the students to have in order to learn more about

how words belong in word families. Be that as it may, most publishers provide exercise-

books in addition to the textbooks. This topic might be addressed in those books. If that

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is not the case, it is important that the teachers understand the importance of including

some exercises in their teaching about how words can be inflected and derived.

4.3 Word Frequency

Table 9 shows how many of the tokens in the texts in all textbooks which belong to the

first 1,000 most frequent words (K-1) in the English language, the second 1,000 most

frequent words (K-2), and so on. Figure 2 further below, shows the percentage of words

that belong to the different frequency categories, excluding the unlisted words, in all

textbooks and news articles.

A difference between the chapters in the textbooks for year 6 and year 9 is barely existent.

For example, the percentage of words in the textbooks for year 6 that belong to the K-1

category is all almost 84% (see Table 9). As for the percentage of words in the textbooks

for year 9, which belong to the same category, is also around 84%. The textbooks for

English 7, however, show a minor difference between the chapters. The percentage of

words in the first chapters that belong to the K-1 category is almost 75%, while the

percentage in the middle chapters is nearly 80%, and almost 79% in the last chapters.

What should be noted, however, is the difference between the words belonging to the K-

1 category and the K-2 category in the total for all textbooks. There is a large decline

from the number of words belonging to the first 1,000 most frequent words and the words

belonging to the second 1,000 most frequent words. It is also notable that the number of

words in the K-1 category lowers with the higher-level textbooks. The total percentage

of words in the year 6 textbooks that belong to the K-1 category is almost 84%, while the

same percentage in the English 7 textbooks is about 77% (see Table 9). As a result of that

the percentage of words in especially the K-2 and K-3 categories increases in the higher-

level textbooks.

30

Table 9. Word frequency in all textbooks

Textbooks Frequency First chapters

n (%) Middle chapters

n (%) Last chapters

n (%) Total n (%)

Year 6 K-1 3009 (83.44) 3519 (83.81) 2567 (83.45) 9095 (83.59)

K-2 166 (4.60) 197 (4.69) 126 (4.10) 489 (4.49)

K-3 38 (1.05) 53 (1.26) 25 (0.81) 116 (1.07)

K-4 28 (0.78) 39 (0.93) 22 (0.72) 89 (0.82)

K-5 23 (0.64) 66 (1.57) 17 (0.55) 106 (0.97)

K-6 - K-25 55 (1.53) 77 (1.83) 64 (2.09) 196 (1.80)

Unlisted 287 (7.96) 248 (5.91) 255 (8.29) 790 (7.26)

Year 9 K-1 5639 (83.13) 5122 (84.56) 6290 (84.54) 17,051 (84.08)

K-2 425 (6.27) 355 (5.86) 418 (5.62) 1198 (5.91)

K-3 177 (2.61) 139 (2.29) 153 (2.06) 469 (2.31)

K-4 86 (1.27) 62 (1.02 96 (1.29) 244 (1.20)

K-5 64 (0.94) 40 (0.66) 60 (0.81) 164 (0.81)

K-6 - K-25 140 (2.04) 70 (1.17) 113 (1.51) 323 (1.59)

Unlisted 252 (3.72) 269 (4.44) 310 (4.17) 831 (4.10)

Eng 7 K-1 6280 (74.59) 5870 (79.34) 4880 (78.57) 17,030 (77.31)

K-2 757 (8.99) 571 (7.72) 454 (7.31) 1782 (8.09)

K-3 456 (5.42) 375 (5.07) 391 (6.30) 1222 (5.55)

K-4 179 (2.13) 86 (1.16) 107 (1.72) 372 (1.69)

K-5 116 (1.38) 56 (0.76) 44 (0.71) 216 (0.98)

K-6 - K-25 314 (3.75) 172 (2.32) 116 (1.87) 602 (2.73)

Unlisted 317 (3.77) 269 (3.64) 219 (3.53) 805 (3.65)

News articles K-1 - - - 4506 (68.69)

K-2 - - - 635 (9.68)

K-3 - - - 524 (7.99)

K-4 - - - 99 (1.51)

K-5 - - - 46 (0.70)

K-6 - K-25 - - - 254 (3.87)

Unlisted - - - 496 (7.56)

The percentage of tokens in all chapters in the year 6 textbooks belonging to the first

2,000 most frequent words is 88.08% (see Table 9), which is a major part of the texts. If

the unlisted words are excluded, the same percentage would instead be almost 95% (see

Figure 2). With these textbooks being intended for year 6, it is not surprising that most

tokens in the texts belong to these categories. It shows that the authors have focused on

words which are commonly used in the English language and which offer the learners the

vocabulary which is most essential for them.

As the threshold of “adequate” comprehension of a text is an understanding of 95% of

the vocabulary (Nation & Hirsh, 1992:689-690), these results show that if the students

31

know the words in the texts belonging to the first 2,000 most frequent words, they will

have an adequate comprehension of all the chapters in the textbooks for year 6. However,

the research which claims that a learner needs 95% understanding of the vocabulary to

have an adequate comprehension (ibid), is based on the idea that the learner reads to

understand the texts, and not reading for the purpose of learning vocabulary. The reading

which the students do in the EFL classroom can be seen as “assisted reading” (Taguchi

et al., 2016:112), which includes for example word explanations by the teacher, and word

translation lists with every chapter in the textbook. This would most certainly lower the

percentage of understanding that a learner needs in order to have an adequate

comprehension of the text.

As for the textbooks for year 9, the students knowing the first 2,000 most frequent words

would have almost 90% coverage of the texts (see Table 9). With the unlisted words, the

same number would be about 94% (see Figure 2). That is almost the same as in the

textbooks in year 6. The only aspect of these numbers that points to a higher level in the

year 9 textbooks, is that there is a slight increase in the number of words belonging to the

K-2. There is also a slight increase in the number of words belonging to the K-3. This

shows that the words in these texts are at a somewhat higher level than in the textbooks

for year 6.

Figure 2. Word frequency in all textbooks and news articles

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

News articles

Eng 7

Year 9

Year 6

Word frequency (%)

K-1 K-2 K-3 K-4 K-5 K-6 - K-25

32

Furthermore, the result of the word frequency in the textbooks used in English 7 shows

that a greater part of the words belongs to the K-2 to K-4 compared to the textbooks in

year 6 and 9 (see Table 9). The percentage of words in the K-1 category has also

noticeably dropped. This reveals that the students in the higher grades need to know more

than the first 2,000 most frequent words in order to get the same coverage of the texts as

the students in the lower grades. More specifically, the students taking the English 7

course would need to know all words in the textbooks belonging to the first 3,000 most

frequent words (excluding the unlisted words) to get a 94% coverage (see Figure 2).

However, since it is assisted reading, there is assumably no need for this high coverage.

A student who does not understand all words in the textbooks belonging the first 3,000

most frequent words, could still have an adequate comprehension of the texts.

Nevertheless, the higher-level textbooks still require the students to know more words

which are less frequent, than those which are at the lower levels.

If one compares the textbooks for English 7 with the news articles, there is quite a

noticeable difference. Figure 2 above gives a good overview of how the percentage of

words in the K-1 category has decreased in the news articles, along with an increase in

almost all other categories. This shows that a learner would need to know a higher number

of the less frequent words in order to understand the news articles, as opposed to the texts

in the English 7 textbooks. The knowledge requirements for the grade E in the syllabus

for English 7 states that the student should know the basic content of written texts that

have advanced English (Skolverket, n.d.b). The news articles could therefore be expected

to be slightly more difficult than the textbooks, considering that the students only need to

understand the basic content in the news articles.

4.4 CEFR Levels

The number of tokens in all textbooks that belong to the different CEFR levels are shown

in Table 10. A more visual comparison between the textbooks and the total percentage of

tokens which belong to the different levels can be seen in Figure 3 below. The figure also

shows the percentage excluding the unlisted tokens.

33

Table 10. CEFR levels in all textbooks and news articles

Textbooks CEFR levels

First chapters n (%)

Middle chapters n (%)

Last chapters n (%)

Total n (%)

Year 6 A1 2615 (69.92) 2998 (70.05) 2176 (68.23) 7789 (69.49)

A2 395 (10.56) 538 (12.57) 356 (11.16) 1289 (11.50)

B1 212 (5.67) 261 (6.10) 177 (5.55) 650 (5.80)

B2 95 (2.54) 93 (2.17) 67 (2.10) 255 (2.27)

C1 14 (0.37) 33 (0.77) 12 (0.38) 59 (0.53)

C2 21 (0.56) 14 (0.33) 12 (0.38) 47 (0.42)

Unlisted 388 (10.37) 343 (8.01) 389 (12.20) 1120 (10.00)

Year 9 A1 4554 (65.86) 4115 (66.79) 4884 (64.90) 13553 (65.79)

A2 884 (12.78) 870 (14.12) 1036 (13.77) 2790 (13.54)

B1 535 (7.74) 431 (7.00) 577 (7.67) 1543 (7.49)

B2 316 (4.57) 213 (3.46) 361 (4.80) 890 (4.32)

C1 63 (0.91) 33 (0.54) 61 (0.81) 157 (0.76)

C2 50 (0.72) 27 (0.44) 77 (1.02) 154 (0.75)

Unlisted 513 (7.42) 472 (7.66) 529 (7.03) 1514 (7.35)

Eng 7 A1 5042 (58.70) 4709 (62.40) 3966 (62.70) 13717 (61.07)

A2 962 (11.20) 947 (12.55) 699 (11.05) 2608 (11.61)

B1 755 (8.79) 658 (8.72) 533 (8.43) 1946 (8.66)

B2 581 (6.76) 443 (5.87) 425 (6.72) 1449 (6.45)

C1 170 (1.98) 95 (1.26) 122 (1.93) 387 (1.72)

C2 126 (1.47) 86 (1.14) 64 (1.01) 276 (1.23)

Unlisted 953 (11.10) 608 (8.06) 516 (8.16) 2077 (9.25)

News articles A1 - - - 3473 (52.09)

A2 - - - 748 (11.22)

B1 - - - 664 (9.96)

B2 - - - 502 (7.53)

C1 - - - 156 (2.34)

C2 - - - 130 (1.95)

Unlisted - - - 995 (14.92)

There is no distinct difference between the chapters in the textbooks for year 6. There is,

however, a noticeable difference between how many words that belong to each of the

CEFR levels, in those textbooks. Almost 70% of all tokens in the texts are categorized as

the lowest level, A1 (see Table 10). There is then a quite large drop to the second lowest

level, A2, which contains about 12% of all tokens.

Although the expected level needed to pass the subject of English in year 6 is A2

(Skolverket, n.d.a), there is no absolute number of how much of the vocabulary should

belong to that specific level and the lower/higher ones. However, it is noticeable that the

majority of the tokens belong to the two lowest levels. This could be expected considering

34

the need for 95% vocabulary understanding in order to have adequate reading

comprehension. If the unlisted words are excluded, the tokens in the two lowest levels

constitute almost 90% of the text (see Figure 3). That should suffice for adequate

comprehension, since it is assisted reading.

The result also shows that there are several tokens that belong to the higher levels as well,

which might seem unexpected in such low-level textbooks. A few examples of words

belonging to the highest level, C2, are: commander, vicious, globe, and infant. How much

impact these words have on the level of the entire texts is hard to say. It is, however, often

these kinds of words that are part of the translation lists in the textbooks, which should

help lower the difficulty of understanding the texts. There are word translation lists in

both year 6 textbooks, so there should be no problem for the students to understand these

words as well.

Much like the textbooks for year 6, the year 9 textbooks do not show a noticeable

difference between the different chapters (see Table 10). The levels in total in the year 9

textbooks have, however, increased compared to the textbooks for year 6, apart from the

percentage of words categorized as A1, which is down by almost four percent. With the

expected level for year 9 being B1 (Skolverket, n.d.a), this increase should be expected.

The percentage of tokens that belong to the A1-B1 levels is almost 87%. The same

number when excluding the unlisted words, is almost 94% (see Figure 3). This is slightly

higher than in the textbooks for year 6, and arguably too high for this grade. If the texts

were to be read for pleasure, this level would be more suitable. However, since the

students do assisted reading of the texts, they might be on the verge of being too easy.

One should also consider that the expected level of B1 in year 9, is based on the

knowledge requirements for the grade E (Skolverket, n.d.a). The students reaching for the

higher grades would therefore need to be on an even higher level. In order to learn new

vocabulary and reach the higher levels, the students need input that allows for this to

happen. The textbooks for year 9 do contain words that are at higher levels than what the

students are expected to know, the question is whether there are enough words at these

level.

35

Figure 3. Total CEFR levels in all textbooks and news articles

In the textbooks for English 7, one can see that the percentage of words categorized as

A1 has decreased even further from that in the year 6 and year 9 textbooks (see Table 10).

The levels which have increased the most are the levels B2-C2. The expected level for

English 7 students is B2 (Skolverket, n.d.a), and the percentage of words that belong to

the levels A1-B2, excluding the unlisted words, is nearly 97% (see Figure 3). This is an

even larger coverage of the words than in the textbooks for year 6 and year 9. It is

debatable whether this is too high a coverage. Similarly to the year 9 textbooks, the

students that are aiming for the higher grades need input that is beyond the levels A1-B2.

However, one can see in Figure 3 that the textbooks do become progressively more

difficult with the higher school years.

The news articles could be a good way of providing input of a slightly more difficult

degree, since they consist of more higher-level words. The news articles could even be

considered to be at a more appropriate level than the English 7 textbooks, since the words

at the levels A1-B2, excluding the unlisted words, give almost a 95% coverage of the

texts (see Figure 3). This means that the students should be able to get an adequate

comprehension of the texts, and at the same time get input from the higher levels and

thereby have the opportunity to learn more new words. The most notable difference

between the news articles and the textbooks for English 7 is the number of words that

belong to the C1 and C2 levels. While the words in those categories in the textbooks for

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

News articles

Eng 7

Year 9

Year 6

CEFR levels (%)

A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2

36

English 7 cover about three percent of the texts (see Figure 3), the words in the news

articles at the same CEFR levels cover about five percent. Since there are no exact

guidelines for how many new words a learner should be exposed to in a text, and

considering that every student has a different amount of knowledge of the language, the

news articles could be an option for the teacher to meet the students’ diverse needs.

5 Conclusion

The aim of this essay was to investigate what vocabulary profiles that can be found in

English language learning textbooks used in Sweden in year 6, year 9, and in the English

7 course, and whether they correspond with the levels suggested by The National Agency

for Education and the CEFR. The results showed that the vocabulary in the textbooks

used in year 6, year 9, as well as in the English 7 course, do provide vocabulary which is

appropriate for the intended school year. This statement is based on the four parts of the

lexical analysis. Firstly, the lexical diversity and the TTR in all textbooks did not differ

noticeably from one textbook from another, which could be a sign that a TTR of around

0.20 is typical for educational texts. Secondly, the number of word families greatly

increases with the grade that the textbooks are used in. This shows that the students in the

higher grades need to know more base words in order to understand the texts. Students in

the sixth grade need to know about 1,200 base words. Students in the ninth grade need to

know almost a thousand more base words than in sixth grade, and students taking the

English 7 course need to know around 2,700 base words. Thirdly, the word frequency in

the textbooks revealed that the learners in the higher grades need to know more words

which are less frequent in order to reach an adequate comprehension of the texts. Students

in year 6 would for example need to know most of the words in the textbooks which

belong to the first 2,000 most frequent words, while the students taking the English 7

course would need to know most of the words in the texts which belong to the first 3,000

most frequent words. Lastly, the CEFR levels confirmed that between 90 and 97 percent

of the words in the texts were categorized within the expected levels. This showed that

the authors of the textbooks had good knowledge of what vocabulary is appropriate. Since

the textbooks are widely used in Swedish schools and thereby accepted by teachers, it is

more confirming than surprising to make this discovery.

37

Considering that this essay only investigated six textbooks, it might be difficult to draw

general conclusions from these results. However, since the results were expected, one

could assume that the authors of the textbooks do have a good idea of what vocabulary is

suitable for the learners. Nevertheless, the textbooks that were investigated are ones that

are widely used in Swedish schools and therefore accepted by a high number of teachers.

If less accepted textbooks were to be investigated, the results would probably not be the

same. It could be interesting to investigate why there is a lack of acceptance of these

particular textbooks. By conducting a study similar to this one, one could find out if it is

because of the vocabulary being unsuitable. This might be worth considering as possible

further research within the area. One should also consider conducting a more extensive

investigation of English language learning textbooks. By analyzing both a higher number

of textbooks and perhaps the entirety of the textbooks, one could get more generalizable

results.

There are a few pedagogical implications that can be drawn from this investigation even

though it is on the smaller side. It could be beneficial for textbooks authors to make use

of the English Vocabulary Profile in order to know what vocabulary is suitable. Teachers

can also benefit from the EVP if they decide to provide the students with educational

material in addition to language learning textbooks. Concerning the textbooks, it can also

be a good idea for teachers to focus some teaching time on how words can be derived and

inflected, in order to ensure that the students have the best possible understanding of word

families and thereby understand a greater number of words. Another pedagogical

impliction to bear in mind as a teacher is that some textbooks might be slightly too easy,

which means that it is important to provide more challenging texts in addition to the

textbooks so as to not under-stimulate some students.

I

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