HKIER

Abstract

This paper examines a selection of written English language material for primary school students in Hong Kong. The paper investigates the issue of word frequency, with regard to word frequency counts from the University of Birmingham's Bank of English corpus. An examination of primary reading material reveals a much larger count of 'unusual' words at the early primary level than might be expected. The author suggests that the focus for reading material — especially in the early primary years — might be more usefully targeted towards the commonest high frequency words.

摘要

本文探討部份本港小學英語科教材中的詞匯出現頻率。跟伯明翰大學英語資料庫比較，可以發現本港初小英語教材中已出現相當大比例的“異常”字詞。本文作者認為初中的英語閱讀教材應盡量採用最常用的詞匯。