A Corpus-Based Study: Authenticity Analysis of Technical Vocabulary from an In-House Textbook and Documents Used in Import and Export Procedures

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Kusuma Pitukwong

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Textbooks are fundamental elements in teaching-learning encounters and therefore should provide real language input to students in order to enhance the effectiveness of their language learning. Through the use of corpus-based analysis, more authentic, content-rich and up-to-date textbooks can be produced that will provide further opportunities for students to experience input from real life rather than language items that have been artificially created. The main purpose of this study was to compile a small sized Textbook Corpus and a small sized Authentic Corpus to explore the authenticity levels of the in-house textbook used in an English for Import and Export course compared to the documents used in actual import and export procedures, which function as the source of authenticity in this context. Additionally, the frequent technical vocabulary lists in the Textbook Corpus and the Authentic Corpus were identified by using a hybrid method (a corpus-based approach combined with the use of a technical dictionary).


            The results show that there were 96 technical vocabulary items, which covered approximately 1.23% of the running words in the Textbook Corpus. For the Authentic Corpus, there were 198 technical vocabulary items, which covered approximately 9.44%. In the aspect of the authenticity levels of the textbook, it was found that the in-house textbook has little similarity to authentic language in terms of technical vocabulary. As a result, the material writers should add these technical vocabulary items found in the top ranks of the Authentic Corpus into the textbook in order to achieve a higher degree of authenticity, and to help the learners focus on more important and frequent items found in real-life situations.

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