Exploring Word Exercises in Textbooks: Supplementing Overlooked Exercises

Exploring Word Exercises in Textbooks: Supplementing Overlooked Exercises

This paper examines word exercises in secondary English textbooks published in Korea. Six textbooks at two levels,―9th grade and 11th grade, were selected as target textbooks. Exercises were examined based on the categories of word knowledge proposed by Nation (1990), which consists of form and meaning, associations, spoken form, written form, grammatical behavior, collocations, and constraints on use. A detailed analysis of word exercises was conducted using Littlejohn’s (2011) analytical framework. The findings of this study show that form and meaning garnered the most attention in four out of the six textbooks; spoken form came next, followed by grammatical behavior. Associations and constraints on use were vastly under-represented in most textbooks. Given the neglected type of word knowledge, the focus of the study shifts to proposing several types of word exercises for synonymy, connotations, word part, and grammatical patterns. The study found that textbooks have a crucial role to play in raising EFL learners’ awareness about well-balanced word knowledge by providing well-designed exercises covering a variety of types of word knowledge.