TY - JOUR
T1 - Lexical Coverage and Readability of Science Textbooks for English-Medium Instruction Secondary Schools in Hong Kong
AU - Hu, Jingjing
AU - Gao, Xuesong
AU - Qiu, Xuyan
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work has been generously supported by Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) (Hong Kong) (EDB(LE)/P&R/EL/164/19), the Guangdong Provincial Social Sciences Research Fund (Grant No.: GD20ZD27), and Tongshan Social Sciences Research Project funded by Sun Yat-sen University (Grant No.: Tongshan 201901).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Textbooks are an important source of knowledge input on which the transmission of academic knowledge often relies, especially in the early stages of academic learning. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study evaluates the text difficulty of science textbooks used in secondary English-medium instruction schools in Hong Kong, with a focus on their lexical coverage and readability. It compares the English language used in English-medium science textbooks with that in English as a foreign language textbooks. The analysis reveals that the text difficulty of the English-medium science textbooks is inappropriate in terms of the coverage of academic words and the readability level. The results also show that the coverage of words from the Academic Word List (AWL) and the General Service List (GSL) as well as the text readability levels, vary across scientific topics. These findings will inform textbook design and the development of pedagogical strategies to facilitate students’ learning of subject content in the medium of English.
AB - Textbooks are an important source of knowledge input on which the transmission of academic knowledge often relies, especially in the early stages of academic learning. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study evaluates the text difficulty of science textbooks used in secondary English-medium instruction schools in Hong Kong, with a focus on their lexical coverage and readability. It compares the English language used in English-medium science textbooks with that in English as a foreign language textbooks. The analysis reveals that the text difficulty of the English-medium science textbooks is inappropriate in terms of the coverage of academic words and the readability level. The results also show that the coverage of words from the Academic Word List (AWL) and the General Service List (GSL) as well as the text readability levels, vary across scientific topics. These findings will inform textbook design and the development of pedagogical strategies to facilitate students’ learning of subject content in the medium of English.
KW - English-medium instruction
KW - corpus-based approach
KW - teaching materials
KW - text difficulty
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102756441&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/21582440211001867
DO - 10.1177/21582440211001867
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102756441
VL - 11
JO - SAGE Open
JF - SAGE Open
IS - 1
ER -