Word frequency and repetition in two Swedish textbooks for German : A corpus analysis focusing on nouns and the support for their acquisition

The aim of this study is to examine the word acquisition, focusing on the nouns and word exercises, in two Swedish textbooks for German in the upper secondary school. The chosen method for investigating the nouns was corpus analysis. The noun frequency and distribution in the textbooks were analysed and discussed in relation to research in second language acquisition. The Involvement Load Hypothesis by Batia Laufer and Jan Hulstijn was used to examine the exercises in the textbooks. The study showed that most nouns only occurred once in the textbooks, but the most frequent nouns were well spread in the textbooks. Most nouns had however a very low frequency, which does not favour implicit learning by reading. The exercises got mostly low scores in the analysis. This correlated with the fact that most exercises were not productive. The conclusion is that the textbooks didn’t support word acquisition through implicit learning very well and that most exercises are primarily designed to support receptive knowledge and use of vocabulary and not productive.