回复：论文求助 word frequency of english vocabulary
Frequency is often considered one of the most important advantages of using corpora, but it is also the motivation for criticism of the corpus-based approach from language pedagogy researchers. For example, Cook (1998: 61) argues that corpus data impoverishes language learning by giving undue prominence to what is simply frequent at the expense of rarer but more effective or salient expressions. Nevertheless, it can also be argued reasonably that:
on the contrary, using corpus data not only increases the chances of learners being confronted with relatively infrequent instances of language use, but also of their being able to see in what way such uses are atypical, in what contexts they do appear, and how they fit in with the pattern of more prototypical uses. (Osborne 2001: 486)
This view is echoed by Goethals (2003: 424), who argues that ‘frequency ranking will be a parameter for sequencing and grading learning materials’ because ‘[f]requency is a measure of probability of usefulness’ and ‘[h]igh-frequency words constitute a core vocabulary that is useful above the incidental choice of text of one teacher or textbook author.’ Hunston (2002:194-195) observes that ‘items which are important though infrequent seem to be those that echo texts which have a high cultural value’, though in many cases ‘cultural salience is not clearly at odds with frequency.’ While frequency information is readily available from corpora, no corpus linguist has ever argued that the most frequent is most important. On the contrary, Kennedy (1998: 290) argues that frequency ‘should be only one of the criteria used to influence instruction’ and that ‘[t]he facts about language and language use which emerge from corpus analyses should never be allowed to become a burden for pedagogy.’ As such, raw frequency data is often adjusted for use in a syllabus, as reported in Renouf (1987: 168). It would be inappropriate, therefore, for language teachers, syllabus designers, and materials writers to ignore ‘compelling frequency evidence already available’, as pointed out by Leech (1997b: 16), who argues that:
Whatever the imperfections of the simple equation ‘most frequent’ = ‘most important to learn’, it is difficult to deny that frequency information becoming available from corpora has an important empirical input to language learning materials.
The following two papers, as well as the references cited therein, may also be of help to you.
Word frequency and word difficulty:
http://forum.corpus4u.org/upload/forum/2006042621295767.pdf
Evidence-based selection of word frequency lists:
http://forum.corpus4u.org/upload/forum/2006042621315043.pdf
