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A Frequency Analysis of Vocabulary Words


in University Textbooks of French


Jennifer Wagner (Clio (MI), USA)


Abstract (English)

Frequency as a principle for vocabulary selection is now commonly used in the creation of English textbooks; however, it is unclear whether frequency has played a role in the creation of French textbooks. In this study, the vocabulary of twelve first-year and six second-year university textbooks published in the United States was compared to a frequency dictionary of contemporary French. The analysis yielded how many high frequency words were found in the textbooks, in addition to which high frequency words were excluded from the textbooks and which low frequency words were included in the textbooks. The results indicate that the textbooks did not provide enough high frequency words needed for basic communication in French.

Keywords: Language materials design, vocabulary acquisition, textbooks, language pedagogy



Abstract (français)



La fréquence comme principe pour la sélection du vocabulaire est utilisée dans la création des manuels scolaires de langue anglaise. Cependant, il reste à savoir si la fréquence a joué un rôle dans la création des manuels scolaires de langue française. Dans cette étude, le vocabulaire de douze manuels scolaires de première année et de six manuels scolaires de deuxième année publiés aux États-Unis a été comparé à un dictionnaire de fréquence de français contemporain. L’analyse donne le nombre de mots de haute fréquence qui se trouvent dans les manuels scolaires, en plus des mots de haute fréquence qui ne s’y trouvent pas ainsi que les mots de basse fréquence qui s’y trouvent. Les résultats démontrent que les manuels scolaires n’offrent pas assez de mots de haute fréquence nécessaires pour la communication de base en français.

Mots-clé: Conception des manuels de langue, acquisition du vocabulaire, manuels scolaires, didactique des langues

1 Introduction

1.1 Frequency in Language Pedagogy

Research on vocabulary in language learning and teaching often supports the notion that frequency is a useful guide for vocabulary selection and sequencing in materials design (Nation & Macalister 2010). Schmitt (2008) and Horst (2013) also stress the significance of the frequency status of words in vocabulary learning with an argument for restructuring language pedagogy to include the most frequent words at the beginning stages of study. Frequency is not the only principle to be considered for vocabulary selection, but it is a crucial aspect with which to begin the selection process.



With the availability of large representative corpora and tools to analyze the texts contained within them, obtaining frequency data on individual words has become increasingly easier and faster. This use of corpora to determine frequency has the additional benefit of being more objective than a native speaker’s or teacher’s intuition, which can be unreliable (Biber et al. 1998, Hunston 2002) and inadequate for determining frequency when used alone (McCrostie 2007).



The use of corpora has also facilitated research on the number of frequent words needed to comprehend the majority of a written or spoken text. It has been determined that the most frequent 2,000 words account for 80% of language use (Meara 1995, Nation 2001), and many researchers advocate for the explicit teaching of these high frequency words at the beginning level of language study study (Nation 2001, Nation & Meara 2002, Schmitt 2000).

Additionally, Cobb & Horst (2004) concluded that the 2,000 most frequent word families of French offer coverage of about 85% of an average text, while Cobb (2014), more recently, adopted corpus-based tools developed for use in analysing English to the French language and found that the top 2,000 words allow 92% of lexical coverage. These higher percentages for the French language (as compared to those for English) indicate that learning the 2,000 most frequent words is even more useful for learners of French than for learners of English.

In environments in which there is minimal exposure to the target language outside of the classroom, as is the case for most students learning French in the United States, the textbook often serves as the sole source of input for the vocabulary that students learn. The textbook also creates the syllabus for the entire language course and determines what is deliberately taught in the classroom(Byrnes 1988, Richards 1993). Therefore, it will be useful to establish how many and which high frequency words actually appear in textbooks, given the necessity of this vocabulary for beginning learners, which first-year or introductory textbooks are intended to encompass.


1.2 Frequency Lists of French Vocabulary

In order to determine the concrete number of high frequency words that are included in French textbooks, a frequency list of French words is necessary for the comparison. Using corpora rather than intuition to create frequency lists of English words, has become rather common over the past two decades, yet corpus-based approaches to frequency in other languages, including French, have remained scarce until relatively recently. Although a few textbooks which claim to provide the most useful or essential words in French are currently available (6000+ Essential French Words (2004), Kurgebov (2006), McCoy (2011)), none of the authors provide any justification on how the usefulness of these words was determined.



In contrast, A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Lonsdale & Le Bras 2009), which features the top 5,000 most frequently used words of French, was created from a corpus of 23 million words of spoken and written French covering various genres and registers. The corpus contains 11.5 million words from interviews, conversations, theatre dialogues, parliamentary debates, and film subtitles in the spoken portion as well as 11.5 million words from newspaper and magazine articles, fiction and non-fiction literature, newsletters, tech reports and user manuals in the written portion. In addition, none of the texts date from before 1950 so as to provide a modern representation of the French language.



Although other corpora of French may be larger, such as ARTFL-FRANTEXT (150 million words of prose and poetry from the 17th to 20th centuries) or EUROPARL (54 million words of the proceedings of the European Parliament), these corpora are restricted to either spoken or written language and consist of fewer genres and registers. The corpus from which A Frequency Dictionary of French was created is the largest corpus to include both spoken and written language in equal amounts across a variety of genres and registers1. For these reasons, it is a useful tool with which to examine the vocabulary coverage of French textbooks in a more objective manner by comparing word lists.



1.3 Rationale for the Current Study

The usefulness of the language provided in French textbooks has been the subject of several studies, but this research has largely focused on certain grammatical features present in the textbooks rather than the overall vocabulary (Etienne & Sax 2009, Fonseca-Greber & Waugh 2003, Herschensohn 1988, O'Connor Di Vito 1991, 1992). While there have been recent studies on high frequency vocabulary in English textbooks (Eldridge & Neufeld 2009, Matsuoka & Hirsh 2010, O’Loughlin 2012), as well as Spanish (Davies & Face 2006, Godev 2009) and German textbooks (Lipinksi 2010), no analysis has been carried out on the vocabulary coverage of French textbooks.



Furthermore, no study has examined the combined vocabulary coverage of first-year textbooks used in conjunction with second-year textbooks in order to determine the amount of vocabulary offered over a two-year course of French at the tertiary level2. Therefore, the present study aims to address this gap by providing an analysis of the vocabulary found in first- and second-year French textbooks designed for university study.




2 Material and Methods


The present study is a quantitative analysis of the vocabulary of university textbooks of French with a comparison to the top 2,000 entries in A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Lonsdale & Le Bras 2009), since high frequency vocabulary consists of 2,000 words (Meara 1995, Nation 2001) and can account for 85 to 92% of lexical coverage of a French text (Cobb 2014, Cobb & Horst 2004). The methodology is similar to that of Davies & Face (2006) and Godev (2009), who used A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Davies 2006) in their comparisons to vocabulary lists of first-year Spanish textbooks.

Additionally, the current study includes an analysis of the vocabulary offered by first-year and second-year textbooks used together over a two-year course rather than only individually for each year level. For the purposes of this study, high frequency vocabulary refers to entries 1 to 2,000 of A Frequency Dictionary of French, and low frequency vocabulary refers to words that are not included in the top 2,000 entries of the frequency dictionary.

2.1 Textbook Selection



The textbooks selected for this study include twelve first-year and six second-year textbooks published in the United States between 2009 and 2013. The first-year textbooks are introductory ones, designed for the beginning level, and assume no prior knowledge of French. The second-year textbooks analysed are designed for the intermediate level and assume some prior knowledge of French, i.e. the vocabulary and grammar found in first-year textbooks. Second-year textbooks review some of the materials from the first-year textbooks while also providing new materials. These first- and second-year textbooks generally form the curriculum for the first two years of French studies at American universities, with the intention of preparing students for more advanced conversation, composition and literature courses in the third and fourth years of a Bachelor’s degree.

2.2 Vocabulary


The active vocabulary of each textbook was included for analysis. According to Davies & Face,“active vocabulary is the vocabulary that students are expected to learn and be able to use, and is generally the vocabulary included in the end of chapter vocabulary lists” (Davies & Face: 2006: 135) as well as the words that are the focus of the vocabulary activities within the respective chapter. Passive vocabulary, on the other hand, most often tends to appear in reading passages, and students are not required to learn these words for productive purposes.

The end-of-chapter vocabulary lists were lemmatised according to the same specifications used by Lonsdale & Le Bras in creation of A Frequency Dictionary of French. Base forms of each word were found by reducing plural nouns to the singular, verb conjugations to the infinitive, and inflected adjectives to the masculine singular form. Any repetitions in the vocabulary lists for each year level were deleted to find the overall number of types rather than tokens that appear in each textbook. Repetitions between first- and second-year textbooks were not deleted in order to determine how much of the vocabulary found in first-year textbooks was repeated in the second-year textbooks analysed.

2.3 Analysis



To determine the number of frequency dictionary entries found in the vocabulary lists of each textbook, each vocabulary list was compared to entries 1 to 2,000 of the frequency dictionary, using the text comparison tool, Text Lex Compare, which is part of Cobb’s Compleat Lexical Tutor website (n.d.). These comparisons yielded an answer to the question of how many high frequency words were included in the first-year textbooks, second-year textbooks, and first-year plus second-year textbooks used together as a two year course of French. Additionally, the comparisons yielded which high frequency words were excluded from the textbooks and which low frequency words were included in the textbooks.

High frequency words that were excluded from the textbooks were sorted according to their frequency rank as indicated in the dictionary, for both first- and second-year textbooks. Low frequency words included in the textbooks were sorted according to which words appeared in all twelve of the first-year textbooks and all six of the second-year textbooks..



3    Results



3.1 Number of Total Words and High Frequency Words in Textbooks



Table 1 shows the total number of words included in each first- and second-year textbook, as well as the number and percentage of high frequency words included in the textbooks. The total number of words included in the textbooks ranged from 938 to 2,363 for first-year textbooks and 633 to 1,818 for second-year textbooks. On an average, first-year textbooks included 1,486 words, while second-year textbooks included 1,077 words.



The number of high frequency words found in first-year textbooks ranged from 515 to 947 with an average of 693 words. For second-year textbooks, the number of high frequency words ranged from 267 to 646 with an average of 426 words. Therefore, only 48% of first-year textbook vocabulary and 41% of second-year textbook vocabulary consist of high frequency words.



For both first- and second-year textbooks, the rate of inclusion of high frequency words is less than half of what researchers recommend. This also means that more than half the words included in the textbooks are low frequency words, which Nation & Macalister (2010: 41) argue “should be dealt with only when the high-frequency words have been sufficiently learned.”


First-Year Textbooks
Words Total
High Freqency Words
High Frequency Words (in 5
Entre Amis
1173
614
52.3%
Voilà
938
553
59.00%
Mais Oui
1352
705
52.10%
Liaisons
1892
756
40.00%
Chez Nous
1690
735
43.50%
Deux Mondes
2363
947
40.10%
Vis-à-Vis
1379
717
52.00%
En Avant
1443
662
45.90%
Français-Monde
1089
515
47.30%
Contacts
1405
733
52.20%
Espaces
1762
832
47.20%
À Vous
1347
555
41.20%
Averages:
1486
693
47.70%




Second-Year Textbooks
Words Total
High Frequency Words
High Frequency Words (in %)
Quant à moi
1818
646
35.50%
Séquences
1204
462
38.40%
Intrigue
904
267
29.50%
Interaction
733
303
41.30%
Bravo
1167
533
45.70%
Personnages
633
342
54.00%
Averages:
1077
426
40.70%

Table 1: Total and High Frequency Vocabulary Coverage in First-Year and Second-Year Textbooks

The figures in Table 1 indicate that neither first- nor second-year textbooks alone offer 2,000 words (with the exception of Deux Mondes). Therefore it is important to consider the vocabulary coverage of first- and second-year textbooks used together over a two-year course rather than in isolation. Comparing the vocabulary in first-year textbooks to the vocabulary in second-year textbooks reveals how many words were shared between the two levels, or how many words are repeated in the second-year textbooks. However, first- and second-year textbooks are created independently of each other, meaning none of the second-year textbooks is designed as a companion to a specific first-year textbook. Therefore, one first-year textbooks and one second-year textbooks were chosen randomly for the comparison.



Table 2 shows these figures for the total number of words shared between two textbooks as well as the high frequency words shared between the textbooks. Second-year textbooks repeated an average of 414 words from the total vocabulary of first-year textbooks, and 229 words from the high frequency vocabulary of first-year textbooks.

First- and Second-Year Textbooks
Total Words Shared
High-Frequency Words Shared
Entre Amis + Bravo
375
256
Mais Oui + Interaction
256
156
Liaisons + Quant à moi
730
384
Chez Nous + Intrigue
369
128
En Avant + Séquences
343
222
Average:
414
229
Table 2: Number of Total Words and High-Frequency Words Shared between First-and Second-Year Textbooks

If the average number of shared high frequency words between first- and second-year textbooks (229) is subtracted from the average number of high frequency words offered by the second-year textbooks (426; see Table 1), the result is 197 high frequency words. This result reveals that second-year textbooks repeat slightly more high frequency words from first-year textbooks than they introduce new high frequency words that were not offered in the first-year textbooks.

Adding the number of words offered by each textbook and subtracting the number of shared words between the two levels determines the number of total words as well as high frequency words offered by a two-year course of French. For example, supposing that the first-year textbook Entre Amis and the second-year textbook Bravo are used for a two-year course of French, the total number of unique words offered is 1,965, which was found by subtracting the number of shared words from the sum of the total number of words of each textbook (1,173 + 1,167 – 375).
First- and Second- Year Textbooks
# Words total
# High Frequency Words
% High Frequency Words
Entre Amis + Bravo
1965
891
45.30%
Mais Oui + Interaction
1829
852
46.60%
Liaisons + Quant à moi
2980
1018
34.20%
Chez Nous + Intrigue
2225
874
39.30%
En Avant + Séquences
2305
903
39.20%
Averages:
2261
908
41%
Table 3: Total and High Frequency Vocabulary Coverage Over a Two-Year Course of French

As shown in Table 3, the average number of total words offered by a two-year course of French is 2,261 words. This shows that a two-year course of French can indeed provide students with 2,000 words. Nevertheless, the average number of high frequency words offered by a two-year course of French is only 908 words, with about 700 high frequency words being offered in first year and an additional 200 high frequency words being offered in second year. About 200 high frequency words found in the first-year textbooks are also repeated in the second year textbooks.



The second-year textbooks neither compensate for the lack of high frequency words in first-year textbooks nor do they provide enough high frequency words missing from the first-year textbooks for students to advance to the next frequency band, as they offer even fewer high frequency words than the first-year textbooks. After two years of study intended to prepare students for the extensive reading required in upper level courses, students are exposed to less than half of the high frequency words. This is at odds with Nation & Macalister (2010) who argue that high frequency words should be given the most attention in language courses before dealing with low frequency words..

The results of the comparisons between textbook vocabulary and frequency dictionary yielded similar results for both year levels. Neither first- or second-year textbooks used individually nor a combination of first-year and second-year textbooks used over a two-year course offer students enough high frequency vocabulary words that are needed for basic communication. These results also reveal that frequency was not used as the guiding principle for vocabulary selection among these textbooks. In order to determine how the vocabulary was selected, the next section will focus on the high frequency words which were excluded from the textbooks as well as the low frequency words which were included in the textbooks.



3.2 High Frequency Words Excluded from Textbooks



A large number of high frequency words were found to be excluded from all of the eighteen textbooks. The number of high frequency words that were excluded from all of the first-year textbooks amounted to 516, and the number of high frequency words excluded from all of the second-year textbooks amounted to 755 words. The top 25 of these high frequency words from each year level are presented in Table 4 for both year levels, with their frequency rank from the dictionary.



First-Year Textbooks
Second-Year Textbooks
Abs. Freq.
Entry
Glossary
Abs. Freq.
Entry
Glossary
98
ainsi
thus
30
mais
but
142
tel
such
31
nous
we
166
soit
either…or
33
ou
or
223
situation
situation
34
si
if, yes
246
également
also
38
elle
she, her
262
mesure
measure
44
aussi
also
275
quant
as for
54
cela
that, it
315
intérêt
interest
73
notre
our
316
mener
to lead
74
dont
whose/which
318
détail
detail
76
an
year
319
appartenir
to belong to
79
monsieur
mister
324
concerner
to concern
89
pendant
during
346
atteindre
to reach
96
depuis
since
365
présence
presence
116
penser
to think
378
peuple
people
130
seulement
only
383
position
position
139
commencer
to begin
388
effort
effort
145
donc
therefore
391
tirer
to pull
147
général
general
395
juger
to judge
148
moment
moment
404
afin
in order to
160
gouvernement
government
405
peine
effort, trouble
161
eux
them
406
malgré
in spite of
162
devenir
to become
411
lors
at the time of
166
soit
either…or
414
voix
voice
171
nom
name
416
base
base
175
possible
possible
Table 4: Top 25 High Frequency Words Excluded from First- and Second-Year Textbooks

The words in Table 4 indicate that the textbooks tend to exclude high frequency vocabulary that represents abstract concepts, such as situation, intérêt, and peine. Many of these words are also complete or partial cognates with their English translations, which could explain why the authors did not include them. In addition, second-year textbooks exclude some high frequency words that were already included in first-year textbooks, such as subject pronouns (nous, elle) and coordinating conjunctions (mais, ou).

In addition, second-year textbooks exclude some high frequency words that the authors assumed were already included in first-year textbooks and did not need to be reviewed in second-year textbooks. This explains why extremely frequent words such as subject pronouns (nous, elle) and coordinating conjunctions (mais, ou) are not found in second-year textbooks, as it is doubtful that a student could pass a second-year French class without already knowing these frequent function words.




3.3 Low Frequency Words Included in Textbooks


In addition to the high frequency words excluded from the textbooks, it is important to look at the low frequency words that were included in the textbooks in order to determine how vocabulary was selected by the authors. Low frequency words found among all twelve first-year textbooks included 57 words. These words are presented in alphabetical order with their English translations in Table 5.

French
English Glossary
French
English Glossary
adorer
to adore
se laver
to get washed
s’amuser
to have fun
mademoiselle
miss
bain
bath
manteau
coat
beurre
butter
marron
chestnut, brown
chaise
chair
musée
museum
chaussure
shoe
neiger
to snow
chemise
shirt
nez
nose
cheveu
hair
oncle
uncle
costume
suit
orange
orange
se coucher
to go to bed
ordinateur
computer
cousin
cousin
pantalon
pants
cravate
tie
pleuvoir
to rain
cuisine
kitchen
portable
laptop, mobile
dent
tooth
poulet
chicken
se dépêcher
to hurry up
se réveiller
to wake up
détester
to hate
rose
rose, pink
dîner
dinner
salut
hi, bye
étage
floor
séjour
stay
glace
ice, ice cream
ski
ski
gorge
throat
soif
thirst
grand-mère
grandmother
tante
aunt
grand-père
grandfather
tarte
pie
ingénieur
engineer
tasse
cup
s’habiller
to get dressed
tennis
tennis
intelligent
intelligent
vélo
bike
jambe
leg
verre
glass
jambon
ham
vêtement
clothing
jean
jeans
voyager
to travel
jupe
skirt



Table 5: Low Frequency Words Included in All Twelve First-Year Textbooks

The fact that these low frequency words were included in all of the first year textbooks indicates that vocabulary selection was not actually based on frequency. Vocabulary selection was also not based on whether a word has an exact or close cognate with the English translation, as there are many cognates among the high frequency words excluded from the textbooks (as shown in Table 4) and the low frequency words included in the textbooks, such as cousin (cousin), dîner (dinner), jean (jeans), tennis (tennis), and ski (ski).


In contrast to the excluded high frequency words which represented abstract concepts, these low frequency words are examples of concrete concepts for which an image or picture can be included in the textbooks to illustrate their meanings. Yet, it was not the quality of being concrete or abstract that determined whether a word was included or excluded from the textbooks. Similar to what Davies & Face (2006: 142) found in their vocabulary analysis of Spanish textbooks, the topics chosen for each chapter largely determined the vocabulary of first-year textbooks. Low frequency words which represent concrete concepts tended to be included in the textbooks because they fit very well into the chapter topics, while high frequency words that represent abstract concepts were excluded because they do not.

The low frequency words can be sorted into distinct topics that are present in all of the first year textbooks. The table of contents of En Avant, for example, shows the topics which are quite common to all of the first-year textbooks, such as family, food, travel, clothing, house, and parts of the body. The textbook authors, therefore, provide words which can be categorized into these topics, regardless of the frequency status of these words.
Chapter
Topic
1
Alphabet, numbers, days and months
2
Personality and appearance
3
Daily activities
4
Family members and pets
5
Food stores and food items
6
Clothing and accessories
7
Entertainment and cultural events
8
Parts of the body
9
One's residence
10
Holidays and other celebrations
11
Life's major milestones
12
City living
13
Vacations and travel
14
A country's history and language(s)
15
France's social and environmental issues
16
The arts
Table 6: Table of contents of the textbook En Avant

Concerning second-year textbooks, there were two low frequency words found in all six textbooks: gratuit and loyer. In the majority (four out of six) of second-year textbooks, there were 15 low frequency words: animé, ça, canne, chèvre, colon, documentaire, épouvante, fac, intrigue, poire, poivron, salade, sous-titre, western, yaourt.



Six of these words refer to food, such as canne and chèvre which were often found in expressions such as canne à sucre and fromage de chèvre. Six of these words refer to films or genres of film, e.g. film d’épouvante. These categories are not surprising, considering the fact that many chapters of the second-year textbooks’ are organised around different regions of the French-speaking world instead of the same chapter topics found in first-year textbooks. The second-year themes tend to focus on the history of French colonisation in these Francophone areas as well as the food that is important or unique to each one of them, such as the sugar cane in Guadeloupe and Martinique. Using films to discover French and Francophone culture is also a common strategy of second-year textbooks, which is not found quite as often as in first-year textbooks.



The low frequency words found in second-year textbooks provide further support for the notion that frequency was not used to determine which words to include in the textbooks. Once again, the overall theme of the chapters - rather than frequency - determined which words were included.

4 Discussion



The frequency analysis showed that 48% of the vocabulary in first-year textbooks consisted of high frequency words, while 41% of the vocabulary in second-year textbooks consisted of high frequency words. However, once the vocabulary between first- and second-year textbooks was compared, it was revealed that roughly half of the high frequency words in second-year textbooks had already been introduced in the first-year textbooks. Therefore, the number of new high frequency words offered by the second-year textbooks is considerably lower than for first-year textbooks. These results show that neither year level, used alone or together over a two-year course, offered enough high frequency words to attain the goal of 2,000 words.



The low number of high frequency words in first- and-second year textbooks indicates that textbook authors did not take any frequency status into account when choosing vocabulary words, which Nation & Macalister (2010) stress as the most important criterion for vocabulary selection. Instead, the selection of vocabulary was driven by the respective chapter topics even though several studies indicate that presenting related words within semantic sets actually hinders rather than facilitates vocabulary acquisition. Tinkham (1993) found that semantically related words were more difficult to remember than unrelated words for English speakers. Tinkham’s study was replicated for Japanese speakers by Waring (1997), whose findings indicated “that the related words took significantly more time to learn than did the unrelated words” (Waring 1997: 267). Further studies by Finkbeiner & Nicol (2003) and Erten & Tekin (2008) showed similar results with the use of pictures with and without first-language translations of the words. A more recent study by Bolger & Zapata (2011) took a different approach by presenting words in stories rather than in lists. Even with the addition of context, their subjects “showed more difficulty in rejecting semantically related distractors” (Bolger & Zapata 2011: 633).

The results of these studies suggest that presenting “words in semantic sets creates competition between items, which in turn increases difficulty during learning and during memory retrieval in language production” (Finkbeiner & Nicol 2003: 379). According to Nation (2000), the most frequent words within a semantic set should be presented first, and once those words have been learned by students, the rest of the words can be introduced. Moreover, he maintains that “even if frequency is used only as a very rough guide to the sequencing of vocabulary in a course, it would lead to the separation of many members” (Nation 2000: 8) of those semantic sets.

Although using a given topic to guide vocabulary selection is not recommended, textbook authors do so because it seems logical to offer the complete lexical coverage of a certain topic at once (Nation 2000) and also because it is easier to design materials in this manner (Folse 2004). Walz takes a more extreme approach and insists that authors include certain words “simply because they exist and not because of any usefulness or frequency” (Walz 1986: 17). The goal of vocabulary selection in the textbooks analysed appears to be oriented towards the inclusion of as many words as possible so as to complete the respective chapter topic, rather than taking the most frequent, and therefore most useful, French words into account – which does not match the goals of the textbooks as stated in the introductions.



Many of the textbooks indicate that they offer a “communicative approach” or an “emphasis on communicative interactions” with a “functional / task-based syllabus.” The chapter topics integrate the functions, structures and vocabulary that seem directly related to each other, such as ordering at a café or restaurant, the partitive article, and types of food and drink (Chez Nous 2009: 305; Français-Monde 2010: 236) or describing daily routines, pronominal verbs, and parts of the body (Espaces 2011: 326; Vis-à-Vis 2011: 352).



An example from the textbook Entre Amis illustrates the use of functional phrases. In a chapter based on clothing, the question Qu’est-ce que vous portez en cours ? and the response Je porte... are introduced with several examples of types of clothing that are to be placed into the response. Therefore, the vocabulary was selected according to the overall topic of the chapter in addition to how well the words “fill in the slots” of the functional phrases (Folse 2004: 24). Rather than high frequency vocabulary being the focus of the chapter, it was a combination of the thematic orientation of the textbook chapter and the communicative or functional phrases that actually determined the organization of the textbook.

Two textbooks explicitly addressed the issue of frequency by claiming that “students are exposed to high-frequency expressions” (En Avant 2012: xviii) and “high-frequency vocabulary is introduced” (Espaces 2011: xiii) though no explanation for how these were determined to be high frequency was given. Several textbooks claim that the language provided within the different chapters reflects the way French is actually used today (Voilà 2010: xii, Vis-à-Vis 2011: xvii) and that students will be exposed to “real-world language” (Mais Oui 2013: xvii), “authentic language” (Chez Nous 2009: xi, Deux Mondes 2009: xiii, Français-Monde 2010: xiv), and “natural language use” (Français-Monde 2010: xv). If the textbooks are indeed offering authentic French, it would be expected that they would include the words that students are most likely to encounter in the real world. However, the results of this study suggest that frequency was not the main factor in vocabulary selection.

The fact that similar results were found for all of the textbooks also attests to the intuitive nature of materials design (Tomlinson 2013) as well as the publishing companies’ encouragement to produce textbooks which are very similar to textbooks already available on the market (Heilenman 1993). Furthermore, the results of this study are similar to what Davies & Face (2006), Godev (2009), and Lipinski (2010) found in their comparisons of Spanish and German textbook vocabulary with frequency dictionaries. Overall, the rationale for vocabulary selection among language textbooks appears to be classroom communication that is based on topics rather than real world communication that is based on frequency.



5 Conclusions


The present vocabulary analysis investigated the extent to which textbooks excluded the most frequently used words of French, and also identified which low frequency words were included in the textbooks. As illustrated by the results, neither first- nor second-year textbooks used alone or combined into a two year course offered an adequate coverage of high frequency words. It was found that the textbook vocabulary focused on words belonging to the chapter topic instead of those that occur most frequently in the French language, which does not respond to current research on the teaching of vocabulary.



More precisely, the demands of textbook design determined the choice of vocabulary which focuses on topic and functional phrases rather than frequency. Consequently, students will lose time learning low frequency words rather than being guided to the high frequency words that they are more likely to encounter in the real world, in order to have the vocabulary to do the pedagogical tasks in the textbook. This finding has several implications for materials designers who should strive to use corpora instead of intuition when selecting vocabulary words in order to meet the goals of the textbooks as expressed in the introductions. The results of this study also point to the need for teachers and students to supplement current textbooks with more high frequency vocabulary as determined by a representative corpus of French.


References

Primary Sources

First-Year Textbooks

À Vous (2012): Anover, V., & Antes, T. A. (2012). À Vous!: The Global French Experience (2nd ed.). Boston: Cengage-Heinle.

Chez Nous (2009): Valdman, A., Pons, C., & Scullen, M. E. (2009). Chez Nous: Branché Sur Le Monde Francophone (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Contacts (2009): Valette, J.-P., & Valette, R. M. (2009). Contacts: Langue et culture françaises (8th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Deux Mondes (2009): Terrell, T. D., Rogers, M. B., Kerr, B. J., & Spielmann, G. (2009). Deux mondes: A communicative approach (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

En Avant (2012): Anderson, B., Golato, P., & Blatty, S. A. (2012). En avant: Beginning French (1st ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Entre Amis (2013): Oates, M., & Oukada, L. (2013). Entre Amis: An Interactive Approach (6th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Espaces (2011) : Mitschke, C., & Tano, S. (2011). Espaces: Rendez-vous avec le monde francophone (2nd ed.). Boston: Vista Higher Learning.

Français-Monde (2010) : Ariew, R., & Dupuy, B. (2010). Français-Monde: Connectez-vous à la francophonie (1st ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Liaisons (2013): Wong, W., Weber-Fever, S., Ousselin, E., & VanPatten, B. (2013). Liaisons: An Introduction to French (1st ed.). Boston: Cengage-Heinle.

Mais Oui (2013): Thompson, C. P., & Phillips, E. M. (2013). Mais Oui!: Introductory French And Francophone Culture (5th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Vis-à-Vis (2011): Amon, E., Muyskens, J. A., & Omaggio-Hadley, A. C. (2011). Vis-à-vis: Beginning French (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Voilà (2010) : Heilenman, K., Kaplan, I., & Toussaint Tournier, C. (2010). Voilà! An introduction to French (6th ed.). Boston: Thomson-Heinle.



Second-Year Textbooks

Bravo (2012): Muyskens, J., Harlow, L., Vialet, M., & Brière, J.-F. (2012). Bravo! (7th ed.). Boston: Thomson-Heinle.

Interaction (2012): St. Onge, S., & St. Onge, R. (2012). Interaction: Langue et culture (8th ed.). Boston: Thomson-Heinle.

Intrigue (2011): Blood, E., & Mobarek, Y. (2011). Intrigue: langue, culture et mystère dans le monde francophone (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Prentice Hall.

Personnages (2010): Oates, M., & Dubois, J. (2010). Personnages: An Intermediate Course in French Language and Francophone Culture (4th ed.). Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Quant à moi (2012): Bragger, J., & Rice, D. (2012). Quant à moi (5th ed.). Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Séquences (2013): Bissière, M. (2013). Séquences: Intermediate French through Film (2nd ed.). Boston: Cengage-Heinle.



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Author:

Dr. Jennifer Wagner

PhD in Applied Linguistics (University of South Australia)

Private address:

1301 East Lake Road

Clio MI 48420

USA

Email: jenniferlynnwagner.com


1 A larger corpus, the Corpus de référence du français contemporain, will be available in 2018 and it will include 310 million words of French from France, including both spoken and written sources from 1945 to 2014 (Siepmann et al. 2017).


2 Two years, or four semesters, of French language courses are generally required before students may enrol in upper level courses at American universities.
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