Chapter 18:Words as They Appear in Malaysian Secondary School English Language

Textbooks: Some Implications for Pedagogy

Jayakaran Mukundan

Presented by:

Mehran Daghestani and Masoud Karimi

IntroductionTextbook writers have eccentricities and while this may be an attribute linked to creativity it nevertheless may lead to their books falling short of the standards set, thus making them pedagogically unsound. In short, intuition and enthusiasm can lead the textbook writer to write pages of tasks and exercises but all this can only come to naught if, especially for the lower levels, some important principles regarding vocabulary acquisition are disregarded .

Research on textbooks is important, especially in L2 (or Second Language) situations as in Malaysia because:

1 .Textbook is usually the only resource used in the teaching and learning of English and as such weaknesses in textbooks will have far-reaching implications on learning-teaching.

2.Learning styles and preferences research shows many learners in Asia to be dependent learners(Reid, 1993) and this implies that these learners depend very much on the teacher and the book.

Text book research on load and disribution patterns of words: the beginnings of corpus-based research on the language of textbooksThis research on textbooks via corpora and the use of concordance software (WordSmith Version 4.0; Scott, 2004) revealed vital information about school textbooks that was not possible in the past (Tomlinson, 1998).

Some of the more important findings were :

1 .The textbooks attempt to achieve too much (and in this case, the learning of too many words) .

The study of books in the 1989- 2003 Cycle (Table 18.1) shows the loading of words to be arbitrary. The Form 1 books which were written for a lower level seemed to have more words (52,262 tokens) than the Form 2 book (40.685 tokens) which was used for a higher level .Tokens in this research refer to running words(Continuous words), while types refer to different words. The Form 2 book however seemed to have far more different words (types) than the Form 1 book (4853 Form 2 as opposed to 3719 for Form 1).

The books currently used (2004-present) are not very different from those in earlier cycle. There is still arbitrary use of words and generally there is an increase in the number of types introduced. The Form 1 book in the old cycle had 3,719 types. The new book has 4,730 types, a marked increase, although no significant changes were noted in the syllabus (Table 18.2).

2.Work by Nation (1990) shows that only about 2000 of the high frequency words in the English Language are necessary for a learner to comprehend 87 percent of any given text .

Although many people may believe that exposure to more words would be good it is the contention of the writer that curricula are best developed for lower levels with the 2000 high-frequency words as a guideline. If the goal of the secondary school curriculum is to produce learners capable of intermediate level of proficiency, then one may wonder why the secondary school textbook should start in Form 1 with 3,719 types (different

words) .

These findings also reveal that the Form 5 book has more than 7,904 types. This excess in loading of words (types) may be the reason as to why proficiency levels of students in secondary schools remain low. The textbook may be viewed as attempting to put unnecessary pressure on beginner learners if it exposes students to too many words too soon. Learners may not be able to remember these words .

Repetition and recycling 1989-2003 cycle: a view into two lower secondary school form two textbook

Repetition will be defined as the re-emergence of the same word within the book while recycling will be considered the use of variations of the word across the book. The Malaysian Secondary School textbooks were analyzed to evaluate repetition and recycling patterns.

Investigations revealed that :3 .Initial evaluations of the distribution of

words in textbooks revealed that items (words/phrases) which were listed in the syllabus did not even appear in the text-books (Table 18.3). Also, there were differences between two books, both published for the same level but by two different publishers.In the case of the two books written for Form 2 which were compared, Textbook 2 seemed to have 20 items from the syllabus list missing within the book, while Textbook 1 had 5 missing items. These words may also not be exposed to learners in other ways such as in

supplementary learning material .

Words which are in the syllabus word list and that do not appear in textbooks may be tested in the public examinations.

4 .Another interesting finding was that important phrases like ‘to the left' and 'to the right', both of which were considered essential language taught in the unit on 'Directions of places in the town or village' were never used in both the books.

5.The two books were again analyzed to evaluate the extent to which words are

repeated (see Table 18.4) .

Again Textbook 2 showed itself to be inferior to Textbook 1. Textbook 2 had 2,075 of the total of 3,678 words (types) appearing only once throughout the book .

Although Textbook 1 was superior in terms of repetition, it also had many words which only

appeared once (1,960 out of 3,856 words) .

A closer scrutiny of words and their repetition/recycling patterns showed more insights into problems with regards to coverage of essential words .

The Form 1 book in the 1989-2003 Cycle for instance reveals that the word 'cook' only appears as the noun form but never as a verb.Only a teacher will realize this and make an effort to seek some other ways to introduce the verb form of the word.

Other aims of this study

To find out if the presented grammar in textbooks is efficient .

Repetition of the 2000 high frequency words in Malaysian secondary school English language .textbooks

THE STUDY ON GRAMMAR POINTS OF MALASIYAN

TEXTBOOKS

The item selected was sequence connectors .(First, Next…)

It was chosen because it is an important grammatical structure in speech and writing.

Table 18.5 shows that both textbooks have extremely different distribution loads and patterns of use.

Table 18.6 shows, for example, that the word ‘First’ can be found in 64.7 per cent of the units in Textbook 1 and 31.8 per cent in Textbook 2. The use of ‘Finally’ in both textbooks is not sufficient as the percentage of recurrence is low, 23.5 per cent of units in Textbook 1 and 36.4 per cent in Textbook 2.

REPETITION OF 2000 HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS IN MALAYSIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS

Thornbury (2002) states that students remember words which are repeated at least seven times over spaced intervals .

Table 18.7 .The number of words repeated less than seven times in the entire set of Malaysian secondary school English language textbooks.

Based on table 18.7In the 2000 high frequency list:

A) 604 words (30.2 per cent) are recycled less than seven times.B) 1267 of the words in the list (63.3 per cent) are repeated at least seven times in the entire textbooks.C) 129 words (6.5 per cent) are not found in

any of the textbooks .D) Even common verbs, like hang, pump, push, sew, tie, spin, polish, jump and examine, are repeated less than seven times through the .entire set of new booksE) Furthermore, there were words in the 2.000 word list that were totally missing in the entire set of textbooks

Conclusion1.The number of words introduced should be

restricted to the most essential ones, especially at lower levels. This is on the assumption that the retention rate of words encountered would be low if too many words are introduced to beginner learners .

2.Words that help with communicative ability at lower levels should revolve around the 2,000 most common words used in the English language. This is based on the assumption that learners can comprehend 87 per cent of general text if they know these 2,000 words (Nation, 1990).

3.The introduction of new words should be gradual. This is based on the common assumption that learning should be about one level higher than what the learners already know (The i + 1 principle).

4.Words that need to be learnt should at least be repeated/recycled seven times at spaced intervals .