A Contrastive Analysis of Chinese College English Syllabus Word List with a General Service List of English Words and Academic Word List

Yongxue TANG

Abstract


Chinese College English Syllabus Word List issued by Chinese Ministry of Education has always been instructing Chinese college English teaching for about 14 years. Now Chinese college English teaching is focusing more and more on learners and to satisfy learners’ needs, Chinese college English teaching is turning from teaching English for general purposes to for academic purposes. To investigate whether Chinese College English Syllabus Word List can meet the vocabulary requirements of academic learning of Chinese college learners or not, a contrastive analysis between Chinese College English Syllabus Word List and A General Service List of English Words and Academic Word List is made via the software, Range. The results show that Chinese College English Syllabus Word List (level 1 to 4) can accord with A General Service List of English Words in word families, but has a low coverage in word types in Academic Word List and most words in Chinese College English Syllabus Word List (level 5 to 6 & level after 6) are not in A General Service List of English Words or Academic Word List. Thus, it can be concluded that Chinese College English Syllabus Word List (level 1 to 4) is made up of high frequent words but not academic words while Chinese College English Syllabus Word List (level 5 to 6 & level after 6) is neither high frequent word list nor academic word list. It is proposed that Chinese College English Syllabus Word List must be revised to meet the requirements of academic learning of Chinese college learners.


Keywords


High frequency words; Academic words; Chinese College English Syllabus Word List; A General Service List; Academic Word List

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

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