Vocabulary acquisition is central to building literacy, yet there is not much research on the vocabulary component of textbooks for school children (Nordlund, 2015). Acquiring the vocabulary of a language is commonly interpreted as “knowing the meaning of the words and being able to use the words”. However, Nation (2019) proposes that knowing a word involves nine aspects. As a primary and nearly compulsory learning material for such a significant number of school children (333,551 in 2022/23) who speak Chinese as L1 and English as L2, the impact of childhood print exposure to English textbooks on their L2 lexical diversity calls for investigation. The study of Brown (2010) on vocabulary activities in English textbooks shows that a single aspect of vocabulary knowledge – form and meaning – receives the most attention in the textbooks, while two other aspects – grammatical functions and spoken form – also receive attention. The other six aspects receive little or no attention. Unlike Brown’s results, our study shows that among the most popular primary English textbooks in Hong Kong (2 publishers; 24 textbooks), four aspects – form and meaning, written form, grammatical functions and spoken form – receive comparable attention, while the other five aspects receive little or no attention. This study hopes to inform researchers and industry collaborators concerning the need to consider a more holistic view of vocabulary knowledge, thus enhancing children’s L2 lexical diversity via their print exposure and interventions, including shared reading (Lefebvre, 2011) and cross-linguistic influence (Yip & Matthews, 2007).

Authors:
Chris Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Stephen Matthews, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Virginia Yip, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

About the Presenter(s)
Chris Law, Research Associate at Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, interested to investigate the impact of childhood print exposure to school compulsory English learning materials on L2 lexical diversity.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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