LANGUAGE IN INDIA
http://www.languageinindia.com
Volume 5 : 10 October 2005

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Associate Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.

LEARNING ENGLISH VOCABULARY AT THE PRIMARY LEVEL -
A FREQUENCY COUNT OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE TEXTBOOKS
USED IN ANDHRA PRADESH
M. Udaya, Ph.D. Candidate

INTRODUCTION

Learning of a language at the most basic level involves three aspects: grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. In other words, importance is placed on the mastery of some grammatical rules and vocabulary items. One cannot learn a language without learning vocabulary. Therefore vocabulary learning is of great importance. It has been reported that learning of new words requires a tremendous effort (Miller and Gildea 1987, Nation 1990). In fact, language learners generally agree that many of their difficulties in both receptive and productive use of vocabulary arise from their inadequate acquisition of lexical knowledge. (Meara 1980, Nation 1990)

A lot of attention has been given to English vocabulary teaching in the recent years because of the dismal performance of learners even after years of learning English as a Second / Foreign language. Thus, the study of vocabulary has occupied the central place in all language teaching / learning activities, and grammar has been pushed to a secondary place.

THE DATA

This paper aims to scrutinize the use of vocabulary in the Primary School level textbooks where English is taught as a second language. So, I have chosen the English textbooks 'English Reader', published by the Government of Andhra Pradesh and prescribed for Classes IV, V and VI in the schools of this state.

METHODOLOGY

Lessons from the English textbooks of Classes IV, V and VI (14 prose pieces and 7 poems in total) were fed into a computer and a vocabulary list was made taking each word's frequency of occurrence for the purpose of analysis. Separate word lists were made for each textbook by classifying the words into various categories like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and indeclinables. Tagging of these words was done by using the Link Grammar Parser developed by Sleater et al. (1994). Then the data was subjected to an analysis in order to determine the persistent problems in vocabulary learning. Total number of words contained in each of these three books is as follows:

One of the most useful pieces of information one can get from computational corpora is the frequency of vocabulary items in running texts. Frequency counts help in finding out the relative frequency of words in a text. The following lists are based on the corpus created by feeding the English textbooks prescribed for classes IV, V and VI published by the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh in the year 1989. These lists are arranged from the most frequent to the least frequent and these reveal interesting differences among of the first fifty most frequently used function words.

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Table - 1

First Fifty Most Frequent Function Word List

Serial No.	Class IV		Class V		Class VI
	Word form	No.    of occurrences	Word form	No.    of occurrences	Word form	No.    of occurrences
1	the	843	the	1034	the	1567
2	and	417	to	476	and	469
3	to	375	and	457	to	432
4	he	350	he	339	he	377
5	a	299	a	329	a	333
6	of	261	of	221	of	304
7	in	238	I	206	in	269
8	I	230	was	199	I	215
9	was	198	in	181	was	215
10	his	179	you	155	his	207
11	they	133	his	154	they	143
12	it	112	that	145	him	127
13	him	110	said	141	on	127
14	on	101	it	131	it	124
15	with	100	not	128	with	108
16	is	98	they	120	that	102
17	that	96	is	104	for	95
18	my	92	but	103	my	95
19	you	85	had	101	at	91
20	at	82	him	93	are	87
21	them	81	as	93	you	86
22	are	81	my	90	but	78
23	for	79	one	88	not	76
24	me	77	when	83	has	70
25	but	72	for	75	all	65
26	said	71	with	74	were	65
27	there	70	she	73	had	64
28	not	70	at	72	have	62
29	all	64	on	70	we	61
30	have	59	can	67	from	53
31	as	59	are	66	she	51
32	were	55	me	62	out	49
33	we	54	there	60	their	44
34	had	52	so	60	when	43
35	from	52	from	59	her	42
36	some	51	then	58	about	40
37	so	49	were	56	be	40
38	she	47	her	56	by	39
39	out	45	very	54	who	37
40	one	42	have	54	this	37
41	when	41	your	52	up	33
42	very	41	this	52	an	33
43	could	40	did	52	him	33
44	an	39	them	51	all	31
45	their	37	we	50	from	30
46	about	36	will	49	she	29
47	who	35	out	48	her	29
48	us	34	could	47	have	28
49	been	34	been	45	if	28
50	get	34	what	44	been	26
Total Number of words		5929		6659		6629
Coverage		45%		45%		47%

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Table - 2
First Hundred Most Frequent Content Word List

Serial No.	Class IV		Class V		Class VI
	Word  form	Frequency No.	Word form	Frequency No.	Word form	Frequency No.
1	people	63	see	60	pigeons	29
2	man	52	them	51	start	23
3	out	45	will	49	prem	22
4	sea	40	out	48	came	21
5	elisha	39	day	44	some	19
6	king	35	eyes	43	socrates	19
7	satish	34	birbal	43	john	19
8	great	33	back	43	very	18
9	little	32	came	40	time	18
10	friend	31	away	40	out	18
11	effim	31	about	39	day	18
12	father	30	some	38	villa	16
13	came	30	people	37	took	16
14	water	26	now	36	see	16
15	like	25	house	32	light	15
16	money	24	asked	31	few	15
17	down	24	get	28	went	14
18	away	24	tree	27	book	14
19	long	23	farmer	27	back	14
20	house	23	come	27	andrea	14
21	ravi	22	soon	26	team	13
22	elephants	22	gajpathi	26	antarctica	13
23	back	22	went	25	pigmies	12
24	went	21	old	25	near	12
25	got	21	little	25	like
26	door	21	baby	25	laddus	12
27	took	20	sleep	23	god	12
28	sancho	20	night	23	father	12
29	men	20	barber	22	way	11
30	lilliput	20	got	21	place	11
31	day	19	room	20	help	11
32	young	19	good	20	heat	11
33	time	19	court	20	good	11
34	saw	19	way	19	down	11
35	panza	19	saw	19	winter	10
36	old	19	long	19	water	10
37	lived	19	emperor	19	vasily	10
38	food	19	told	18	small	10
39	good	18	afzel	17	put	10
40	few	18	next	17	live	10
41	well	17	mother	17	know	10
42	looked	17	master	17	king	10
43	letter	17	make	17	days	10
44	home	17	know	17	children	10
45	help	17	down	17	bottles	10
46	come	17	dead	17	begin	10
47	felt	16	put	16	work	9
48	eat	16	look	16	wind	9
49	village	15	child	15	well	9
50	high	15	poor	14	saw	9
51	gave	15	play	14	little	9
52	began	15	heard	14	front	9
53	now	14	bats	14	fly	9
54	feet	14	web	13	expedition	9
55	crocodile	14	trolls	13	track	8
56	lesson	14	paradise	13	forest	8
57	animals	14	insect	13	fever	8
58	without	13	whole	12	dark	8
59	read	13	troll	12	away	8
60	poor	13	ran	12	audience	8
61	please	13	lion	12	tried	7
62	learn	13	keep	12	snow	7
63	ashok	13	find	12	people	7
64	work	12	cave	12	men	7
65	way	12	well	11	look	7
66	monkey	12	tried	11	come	7
67	left	12	himself	11	sat	6
68	hand	12	fell	11	made	6
69	family	12	duty	11	left	6
70	woman	11	anyone	11	kind	6
71	walking	11	akbar	11	flew	6
72	under	11	young	10	feet	6
73	three	11	looked	10	falcons	6
74	things	11	life	10	young	5
75	stick	11	home	10	want	5
76	sir	11	help	10	summer	5
77	put	11	children	10	ship	5
78	place	11	sun	9	school	5
79	night	11	stone	9	region	5
80	near	11	same	9	pygmy	5
81	lot	11	quite	9	name	5
82	large	11	quickly	9	moscow	5
83	know	11	live	9	loose	5
84	knew	11	knew	9	last	5
85	keep	11	feet	9	keep	5
86	elephant	11	wall	8	hard	5
87	days	11	take	8	find	5
88	zone	10	send	8	crito	5
89	wind	10	lay	8	wear	5
90	take	10	kill	8	washington	5
91	stood	10	give	8	warm	4
95	son	10	fast	8	use	4
96	shouted	10	die	8	tears	4
97	luggage	10	dears	8	spent	4
98	hundred	10	blind	8	shut	4
99	god	10	alive	8	pit	4
100	country	10	aksah	8	owner	4
Total No. of words		1321		1858		937
Coverage		10%		12%		12%

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Table-1 and Table-2 above show the distribution of basic function words and content words. Function words in Table-1 include determiners, pronouns, prepositions, modal verbs, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, etc. Table-2 contains content words, which include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

High frequencies of function words are indeed one of their defining criteria. On closer examination, it is noticed that some of the content words particularly the first 10 (Table-2) show high frequencies when compared with the last 10 (Table-1) function words. The number of words and their percentage coverage in the whole text is presented in the following Table 3.

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Table 3
Words and their coverage

S.erial No.	No. of words	The cumulative coverage of words at different intervals
		Class IV	Class V	Class VI
1	50	45%	45%	47%
2	100	55%	57%	59%
3	150	62%	63%	65%
4	200	66%	67%	67%
5	300	72%	69%	71%
6	400	77%	70%	78%
7	500	80%	72%	80%
8	600	83%	74%	82%
9	700	85%	75%	85%
10	800	87%	77%	89%
11	900	89%	81%	91%
12	1000	90%	85%	95%
13	1200	95%	87%	97%
14	1400	98%	93%	98%
15	1600	99%	96%	99%
16	1800	99%	97%	99%
17	1839	99%	98%	100%
18	2000	99%	98%	-
19	2072	99%	98%	-
20	2160	100%	100%	-

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3. 3. OBSERVATIONS

1. The frequency analysis informs us that the crucial part of the vocabulary of the learner lies in the first 1000 words, which have a coverage of 90% in the whole text.
2. The fifty most frequent function words in these 1000 words list contribute coverage of 45% of the whole text.
3. Afterwards (i.e., next 1000 words) there is an increase of 1% in coverage for every 200 words. In other words the rest of the vocabulary (roughly 1000) in the text contribute only 10% or less than 10%.
4. The distribution of function words and content words across the three textbooks roughly maintain the same range (i.e., in terms of coverage and contribution).

Some important observations that emerged from the corpus analysis of Class IV, V and VI textbooks are:

1. The ranks of most of the words used in our corpus conform closely to those obtained in the Brown corpus (Kucera &.Francis 1967), the relative frequency of words, ranging from the most frequent (always the word 'the') through the least frequent 'been' are the same, while some words have changed their order that can be ascribed to the differences in the size of corpus.
2. From the frequency lists it was easy to find out which word among the synonyms is the most frequent. For example, if we take start (23), begin (10) and commence (1), start is more frequent than begin, and commence is the least frequent having just one citation as against 23 times for start.
3. Percentage coverage can be the main criterion for selecting what has to be taught to the students of primary level. Frequency information allows teachers to focus appropriately on the most common words, ensuring that learners know and can actively use them. The less frequent words are topic specific and are acquired when needed, e.g. paradise, expedition, or judgment. The common words need less learning effort as frequency of exposure helps in easy understanding.
4. The words which commonly go together are not included in the text books, such as knife, fork, spoon, but loan-words such as kitchen, train, stove, etc. are given which learners are familiar with and which occur in their mother tongue.
5. Many new words are introduced at the primary level such as astronaut and hijack which occur as less frequently occurring content words, where the learners need not spend more time in learning.
6. Idioms are also introduced such as get up, inside out, by the way where the complete meaning cannot be deduced from the sum of its parts. Some of these words include inflected forms of nouns such as plural and possessive. E.g. Boy-boys, teacher- teachers, light-lights, child-children.
7. Word lists/vocabulary extracted from these texts do not include all the inflected forms of the relevant categories. The following examples are taken from Class IV textbook :
   > large - larger - largest
   quick - quicker - quickest
   brave - braver - bravest
   clever - cleverer - cleverest
   young - younger - youngest
   great - greater - greatest
   The words in Italics do not occur in the word lists, however included here for comparison.
8. A large number of irregular verb forms, especially the past tense forms occur, but the present tense forms do not occur, e.g. took, cut, went.
9. The comparative inflections - er and - est (sooner, soonest; quicker, quickest) have been found.
10. The content word list involves many derived words belonging to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. It has been found that only certain derivational vocabulary are frequent and hence important in learning and teaching.
11. Derived words here mainly consist of words derived by adding derivational prefixes and suffixes to the stem. These affixes often change part of speech of the existing word. Some of the derivational affixes listed below are very productive when some are not (see table 4 & 5).

The most commonly occurring prefixes in these textbooks are in-, dis-, de-, un-, over-, under-, fore-, re- and ir-.

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Table 4
Word list for commonly occurring prefixes un-, il-, ir-, in-, dis-.

Class IV		Class V		Class VI
Word  form	Frequency No.	Word form	Frequency No.	Word form	Frequency No.
Unnoticed	1	unusual	1	unloading	1
Uncomfortable	1	untied	1	unknown	1
Disappointed	1	unlike	1	unhappy	1
Undecided	1	unhurt	1	unclean	1
-	-	unhappily	1	irrepairable	1
-	-	uneasy	1	irregular	1
-	-	disobey	1	untied	1
-	-	-	-	incurable	1
-	-	-	-	disability	1
Total words	4		7		9
Coverage	0.03%		0.06%		0.12%

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The second language learner has to learn the most productive affixes and also their patterns of distribution, which is not an easy task. E.g. teach - teacher - teaching. This particular affix -ing does not change the part of speech as both are nouns, rather the grammatical meaning of the word is changed. A teacher is one who teaches, teaching is a classroom activity of a teacher.

The most commonly used inflectional suffixes are -est, -ies, -ed, -ing, and derivational suffixes are -tion, -ly, -ness, -ful.

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Table 5 Word list for frequently occurring suffixes -ness, -ity, -ise, -en, -al, -ly.

Class IV		Class V		Class VI
Word  form	No. of occurrences	Word form	No. of occurrences	Word form	No. of occurrences
quickly	5	suddenly	12	woolen	4
loudly	5	slowly	12	immediately	4
fearlessness	4	quickly	9	given	3
kindness	4	really	8	reality	3
friendly	4	carefully	7	elderly	3
wooden	3	finally	6	slowly	3
taken	3	terribly	4	happily	3
broken	3	surely	4	easily	3
frighten	3	lovely	4	smallness	2
slowly	3	certainly	4	activity	2
hardly	3	tightly	4	quickly	2
burial	3	illness	4	nearly	2
loudly	3	happiness	4	generally	2
fallen	2	immediately	3	commonly	2
scarcely	2	happily	3	calmly	2
safely	2	gently	3	terribly	2
humbly	2	widely	3	simply	1
finally	2	heavily	2	silently	1
eagerly	2	extremely	2	undertaken	1
comfortably	2	deeply	2	threatened	1
badly	2	completely	2	taken	1
chiefly	2	greatness	2	sadden	1
tidal	2	sadness	1	hasten	1
simplicity	1	kindness	1	regularly	1
threaten	1	cleverness	1	perfectly	1
loosen	1	heaviness	1	orderly	1
hidden	1	ability	1	mostly	1
traditional	1	swiftly	1	naturally	1
removal	1	strongly	1	sincerity	1
arrival	1	solemnly	1	possibility	1
worldly	1	silently	1	ability	1
tightly	1	rudely	1	activity	1
Total words	71		107		60
Coverage	0.54%		0.80%		0.77%

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1. It has been observed that when more than one affix is involved in derivation, the resulting words are more complex and hence present difficulties in the acquisition of the word. Often these words have different meanings and different restrictions for word collocations from those of their bases. This makes language learning very difficult. In such a case, each word has to be acquired as a separate one. However, if frequencies of words are correlated with their usage patterns, it seems prefixation in derivation is less frequent hence present difficulties in acquisition when compared to suffixation (refer Table 4 & 5).
2. Some of the contracted forms are acquired later than the full forms. These examples suggest that learners begin lexical development by using features that vary along perceptual dimensions. The forms in the left most column are spelling variants (abbreviated) of the corresponding forms in the right of the table. However, they occur in less frequencies. In formal learning or teaching one may avoid use of such variants.

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Abbreviated Form/ Full Form	Frequencies
	Class IV	Class V	Class VI
n’t / not	30  /  70	41 / 128	9  /  50
’ll / will	14  /  13	9   /   49	4  /  24
’d / would, had	-   /   15	-   /   38	3  /  17
’m / am	8    /    8	8   /   20	1  /  20
’s / is	28  /  98	12 / 104	3  /  78
’re / were	12  /  55	2   /  56	1  /  34

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These examples suggest that learners begin lexical development by using features that vary along perceptual dimensions. Learners acquire nouns earlier than verbs, but the learnability criteria explain how the learners establish word classes that are equivalent to noun or verb.

CONCLUSIONS

To conclude, this paper has provided a basis for making sure that learners get the best return for their vocabulary learning and it has an important role to play in curriculum design and in setting learning goals. It does not mean that learners must be provided with large vocabulary lists as the major source of their vocabulary learning activity. It means that the course designers should have lists to refer to when they consider the vocabulary component of a language course and the teachers need to have reference lists to judge whether a particular word deserves attention or not.

The frequency counts provide useful information about the range of words, and also indicate the problems associated with them in the following ways:

1. The most serious problem with word lists is that certain useful important words do not occur in the first 1000 words. Often these words are abstract nouns, adjectives, for example: judgment, behavior, etc. If the frequency is the only criterion of selection, these words cannot be included in a beginner's vocabulary of 1000 words.
2. Another problem is that some words, which are not suitable for a beginner's vocabulary are found in the first most frequent 1000 words. For example, thee, thou, bliss, bruises, blurred, etc.
3. The order of the words in a frequency list is not the best order to teach the words, for example, his is the 11th word in one list and her is the 40th word in class V list. If this order is followed, word her should not be taught until senior secondary school or university level.
4. About 90% of the words in the texts are high frequency words. In other words, with a command over just 1000 words a learner can read and understand 90% of the texts. Thus, these 1000 words are very useful and important for elementary level learners of English. So these words deserve considerable time and attention from both the teachers and the learners and will pay rich dividends in the long run.
5. The Low frequency words in the texts account for only 10% percent of the total texts. These words occur only once in the text and are unlikely to be used again for a very long time. The list of the low frequency words is very long though they cover only a very small portion of the texts. So much time should not be spent on such words, rather it is more important to teach learning strategies, such as guessing from the context or using parts to deal with the full words as they occur.
6. Word frequency counts help teachers and course designers in several ways. They help a teacher to develop a feeling as to which words are more useful and should be given more attention than others. They provide principles for developing appropriate materials for teaching, for designing courses and for preparing good tests, and for developing specialized words lists.

As vocabulary teaching fits into a language learning course in the following four ways, most courses make use of all the four language skills i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing. But the amount of time spent on each of these depends on the teacher's judgement in relation to a large number of factors, such as the time available, the age of the learners, the amount of contact with English outside the school hours and the teacher's view as to how a language is better learnt. The following ways described below move from the most direct teaching-learning activities.

1. Words are dealt with, as they happen to occur. This means that if an unknown word appears in a reading passage, the teachers give attention to it, if it causes problem. They draw students' attention to the denotative meaning of the word rather than a contextual one. They point out the regular features of spelling and grammar so that learning that word will help learning of other words, but they should focus attention on learning and its usefulness, then decide how much time has to be spent on it.
2. In these text books vocabulary is taught in connection with other language activities. For example, the vocabulary of a reading passage is dealt with before the learners read the passage. Through direct teaching and reading learners become familiar with the topic and the vocabulary before they need to use it in the formal speaking activity. Jordens (1977) suggests pre-teaching as a preparatory step for listening exercises which further expose the students to a wider range of vocabulary. Another possible way to teach vocabulary is to give exercises followed by reading or listening tasks. For example, "Find the words in the passage which …" etc. In all, the activities described in these text books, the teaching of vocabulary is always related to other language activities.
3. It is mentioned in these text books that time should be spent on learning spelling rules or activities like dictionary use, guessing words, pronunciation and comprehension exercises. But this much time can be spent on activities involving the whole class as in learning mnemonic techniques, working in groups like in paraphrasing activities or combining arrangement exercises, or working individually as in the use of vocabulary puzzles or code exercises.
4. With the growing use of computers in language instruction, the selection of vocabulary to be learned can be placed increasingly in the hands of the learner. Programs on the computers allow teachers to prepare texts such as dictionaries, thesauruses, or pictures, within the computer. The students by using these programs can decide when and where they need help with vocabulary. When a student clicks on a word or touches the key indicated in the program, a pop-up dictionary gives the meaning, or grammar of cultural information, or simple translation information about the word. With computer access to the dictionary, the student can look for meanings with ease.
5. Students can be given vocabulary of fields that interest them, such as finding picture books with all sorts of vehicles, or buildings, or food items, if students are interested in them. Students can learn new words through television and radio broadcasts in which they will encounter new vocabulary.
6. If computers are available, a more modern version of the word list method can be used. Classes or individuals can build their own word lists or even complete dictionaries using do-it-yourself computer programs. Entries placed in these lists or dictionaries can then be programmed into a variety of computer word games or multiple-choice activities. Using the program, students can monitor their work and keep track of their progress.
7. Sometimes native language translations (a bilingual gloss) or second language synonyms for the words can be provided with word lists. When word lists are coupled with glosses, either L1 or L2 glosses, or when learners are encouraged to use context to guess meanings, it is another step in vocabulary learning, i.e. getting the word meaning.
   Such vocabulary exercises will reinforce the previously learnt vocabulary and also help in better and more competent handling of the L2.
   1. The meanings and structures of words and their relation with the context.
   2. Getting the appropriate word meaning, remembering the word form and matching the word with its meaning.
   3. The meaning variations with change in collocations and the relative frequency of these meanings.

Thus learning can be adhered to seriously, especially when learners are exposed to the language for the first time at the primary level, which can be the major factor for learning of English in Andhra Pradesh.

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