英字新聞社説の語彙分析とその結果を活用した簡易CAVL  [in Japanese] Vocabulary Analysis of English Newspaper Editorials and  [in Japanese]

Reading newspapers everyday has been said to effectively increase one's reading skillsand vocabulary set. But finding enough time to go through all the articles is difficult. Whatis needed is a more efficient method. Thus I wish to examine the extent to which readingability and vocabulary set can be acquired by reading only editorials, a prominent featureof newspapers.Fortunately, many newspapers articles are offered online today. Newspapers inEnglish such as the Japan Times and the Daily Yomiuri are no exception. These onlinenewspaper sites not only provide daily articles, but also allow access to archived articlesfrom the past several years. This paper analyzed as its target nearly one year of editorialsfrom the Japan Times, a major English newspaper published in Japan.First, I reviewed all the editorials and placed them into categories to determine thepercentage of each category of editorials. I found that editorials concerning politics (domesticand international) and social issues (domestic crime, education, etc.) combined accountedfor more than 50% of the editorials. Thus there is a bias in the types of editorials thatappear. Also, by examining the relationship between vocabulary words that appear in theeditorials as a percentage of the most-frequently appearing words in the editorials, I confirmeda bias in the frequency of vocabulary words appearing in the editorials. One can surmisea deep relationship between the two results. From these two findings, we see thatwhen it comes to using editorials as vocabulary learning material, work is needed to providea rich variety in the different categories to L2 learners. For example, it would be agood idea to distribute data to the learners based on articles'title and categories, and provideguidance so that they evenly choose the articles from the range of categories.Next, I analyzed the frequency of vocabulary words appearing in the editorials, andcalculated the percentage for which the words appear in the following three vocabularylists: AWL (Academic Wordlist), Jacet4000, and TOEIC important words. I found thatvocabulary words appearing more than once constitute 91.1% of AWL, 84.6% of Jacet4000,and 71.5% of TOEIC important words. Vocabulary words appearing fives times or moremake up 68.7%, 62.0%, and 42.9% of the vocabulary lists, respectively. According to Horst,if a target vocabulary word appears at least six times, a condition is created in which themeaning of the vocabulary word is completely understood. If one assumes that a learner isreading an English text with the desire to increase his or her vocabulary, he or she may acquire the meaning and usage of vocabulary words even if they are encountered fewerthan six times. This suggests that editorials can be used as learning material for"incidentalvocabulary learning,"which fosters vocabulary building during text reading.Finally, the results of our analysis suggested the use of simple CAVL (Computer-aidedVocabulary Learning). In CAVL, students read the Japan Times editorials while referringto a vocabulary list (spreadsheet file) with links to online dictionaries and concordances. Byhaving the students do so, instructors may be able to sweep aside students'fear that"Icannot read editorials in English newspapers because they are difficult."Also, if studentscreate original vocabulary lists using the method shown in this paper, it may be possible forthem to learn even more effectively. By continuing this learning approach, I believe thathow vocabulary words are used in living English will be etched in students'minds.