Texts for Reading Instruction and the Most Common Words in Modern Standard Arabic: An Investigation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Academic Vocabulary, Textbooks, and Vocabulary Instruction (Table 4)

Abstract

The authors conducted an analysis at the word level of four Arabic multidisciplinary textbooks in grades one and two in Egypt. The study sought to answer four questions: What are the most common words in standard Arabic? How many of the most common words in standard Arabic are used in the textbooks? How dense is the use of common words? How many rare words are used in the textbooks studied? Analysis found that the texts did not make use of any of the rare words found in the corpus, but many words in the texts did not appear in either the reference corpus inclusive of the common words list. Recommendations for policymakers and textbook publishers follow.

Authors

• Thomas DeVere Wolsey, California State University - East Bay

• Elfrieda H. Hiebert, TextProject

• Ibrahim M. Karkouti, The American University in Cairo