| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This is a two-year research project from 1994 to 1995 concerning English vocabulary employed in the school English language school textbooks used in the pre-war periods. From among a countless number of textbooks, authorized and non-authorized by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the author has selected nine textbooks, three volumes of each series : (1) Barnes' National Readers, (2) The Mombusho Conversatinal Readers, (3) The Globe Readers, (4) New English Drill Books (These were mainly used in the Meiji Era), (5) International Readers, (6) Kanda's Crown Readers, (7) Girls' New Taisho Readers (These three were used in the Taisho Era.), (8) The Standard English Readers, and (9) 「Eigo」 (These two were used in the Showa Period.).
All the words in the above textbooks were fed into the computer, vocabulary listis were made by the comuter (HITAC M680/180E), and the words were counted in terms of the series of the textbooks and volumes.
It has been found that in the pre-war periods much more words were taught at school for the first three years, i.e., in the pre-war period about 32,600 words were used in one series, while at present only about 8,000 words appear in the three volumes of the series of the Sunshine English Course (Kairyudo), for example. One of the findings is that the tokens (index words) in the pre-war textbooks are much larger in number than those in the post-war textbooks. Learners will find it easier to read the Converstional Readers than the Sunshine English Course, for they will come across an unknown word after every 15.24 words in the former, while after every 5.57 words in the latter.
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