한국, 중국, 일본 초등영어 교과서의 어휘 비교 분석

A comparative study of vocabulary in the primary English textbooks of South Korea, China and Japan

This study aims to analyze vocabulary in the primary English textbooks of South Korea, China and Japan. For the analysis, one kind of textbook was selected per country and text files of these textbooks were created. The analysis of vocabulary was conducted in terms of the vocabulary size, the lexical variation, word frequency and the lexical characteristics. The results of the study were as follows; first, the vocabulary size of the Chinese textbooks was the largest among the three kinds of textbooks. Second, the lexical variation was the smallest in the Korean textbooks, which means that the textbooks showed a large number of repetitions of words. Third, the analysis of word frequency showed that the textbooks of the three countries contained similar function words but diverse content words. Finally, it was revealed that the Chinese textbooks contained many words introducing Chinese culture and the Japanese textbooks contained a variety of words representing other cultures. This paper suggests that English textbooks of Korea need to provide a larger vocabulary and to include more words reflecting various cultures of other countries.