Vocabulary in English Textbooks for Swedish Secondary School : A Study about the Frequency of Vocabulary in Textbook Wordlists and the Selected Vocabulary Exercises

This study examines the level of frequency of wordlists, and the selected vocabulary exercise type in two English textbooks aimed at first year (English 5) and third year (English 7) Swedish secondary school students. A quantitative analysis was conducted by inserting the wordlists into an online tool, which generated a frequency list based on lemmas in accordance with the BNC corpus. The analysis of the wordlist indicates a majority of low frequency lemmas and a minority of high frequency lemmas, which studies report that students are not familiar with. The results of the frequency analysis support findings of previously conducted studies regarding insufficient number of high frequency words in EFL textbooks. Vocabulary exercise types were also identified, counted and analysed. The analysis of the vocabulary exercise types indicates a preference for production exercises in the textbook aimed at English 5, and a preference of interpretation exercises in the English 7 textbook. The effectiveness of commonly found exercise types in the textbooks are supported by previous research.