Authorized Junior High School English Textbooks in Japan: From the Viewpoint of Vocabulary and Readability Kenji Kitao （ Doshisha University ） Shosaku Tanaka （ Ritsumeikan University ）

Background English is first taught in junior high schools. Basics of English are taught for three years. Almost all Japanese students take English. Based on the Course of Study Authorized textbooks based on the course of study quantity difficulty level of English vocabulary

Goal Analyzing English in junior high school textbooks （ 7 series between 2002 and 2005 ） Readability Vocabulary and difficulty levels

Research Questions Tokens (quantity) and types (variety) Common words among textbooks Readability and grade levels Vocabulary levels and grade levels

Methods 21 government authorized textbooks (7 series) used between 2002 and 2005 Corpora made by ELPA Main texts and vocabulary lists on the inside covers Excluding lessons with only exercises numbers ： lemmatized words no

Tool Readability Tests Document Readability And Improve It Tagging/lemmatization TreeTagger Other Perl programs made by presenters

Result ： Token (all words) grademean SDMinMax 7th th th words for 3 years →3 years ≒ 100 weeks ⇒ 55 words per week Very few words

Result ： Types grademean SDMinMax 7th th th words →9 words per week very few

Result ： Common words Only 252 words are used in 7 series. grade Common words 7th69 8th92 9th91 Used in 7 textbooks Used in 14 textbooks Used in 21 textbooks List of common words

Result ： Average syllables grademean SDMinMax 7th th th many short words almost no difference between grades Average syllables=all syllables/all words

Results ： Average length of sentences grademean SDMinMax 7th th th Average length of words is 5.57 words. Longer for upper grades very short for 7th grade （ many passages are dialogues ） Average length of sentences =all words/all sentences

Results ： Readability grademean SDMinMax 7th th th Flesch readability Higher for upper grade very low, particularly for 7th grade （ grade 1-4 for native speakers ） Average #syllables Average #sentences

Vocabulary Lists (levels) Vocabulary Lists Nos. of words Levels JACET4000 (J4)40644 JACET8000 (J8)82508 ALC SVL (SVL) Hokkaido Univ. List (HU)74545 General Service List (GSL)22841 Academic Word List (AWL)57060 Vocabulary list General vocabulary Academic vocabulary

Data and Method Rank correlation coefficient Goodman-Kruskal γ （ γ ∈ [-1,1] ） Data Common words used in textbooks, except proper nouns, number characters, and compound nouns Unit of count token type γ 10 PositivelyCorr.NegativelyCorr. Non-corr.

Result ： Grade and Vocabulary Level Correlation between grade and vocabulary level Almost none ListJ4J8SVLHUGSLAWL token type γ AWLHU J4 J8 GSL SVL 【 token 】 Vocabulary on those lists are different from vocabulary taught in junior high. ⇒ Which list is the best?

Conclusion Statistical survey of Junior High School Textbooks For upper grades More words and more new words (still very few) Higher readability （ still very easy ） Sentence length is longer. The difference between 7th and 8th grades is large. No vocabulary list is suitable for junior high school English lessons.

Reference THE COURSE OF STUDY FOR LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL FOREIGN LANGUAGES (2003). m m Teaching English in Japan TEFL IN JAPAN--- JALT 10th Anniversary Collected Papers (1985 JAT) (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED )

Appendix

Textbooks Used between 2002 and 2005 COLUMBUS 21 （ Mitsumura Tosho ） NEW CROWN （ Sanseido ） NEW HORIZON （ Tokyo Shoseki ） ONE WORLD （ Kyoiku Shuppan ） SUNSHINE （ Kairyudo ） TOTAL ACTIVE COMMUNICATION （ Shubunkan ） TOTAL ENGLISH （ Gakko Tosho ）

Result ： Nos. of Sentences grademean SDMinMax 7th th th sentences for 3 years 10 sentences per week Very few

Result ： Average Number of Letters grademean SDMinMax 7th th th Average 4.04 letters Many short words Longer words for upper grade Average number of letters =total number of letters/total number of words

Goodman-Kruskal γ S : #concordant pairs D :#discordant pairs word w1 → word w2 → Appearing Grade Level in the word list y1>y2y1=y2y1<y2 x1>x2 x1=x2 x1<x2 Blue cell … concordant Red cell … discordant 【 Concordant/Disconcordant 】

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level=.39*ASL+11.80*ASW ASL:average length of sentences （ nos. of words/sentence ） ASW: average number of syllables

Kenji Kitao Shosaku Tanaka