Texts and frequency lists: Some implications for practising teachers

Abstract

Written texts play a major role in the work of English language teachers, and it is obviously important to consider how we select those texts, what difficulties students might encounter with them, and how those difficulties might be surmounted. But what is it that makes a text difficult? These days there are tools available to any teacher with access to Microsoft Word and the Internet, which can provide instant data about texts. These include software which provides detailed analysis of texts based on frequency lists. In this survey, five texts are analysed using these tools. The data is compared with comments provided by a sample of teachers and students concerning the same texts. The study concludes with some suggestions as to how teachers might go about text selection, and how approaches to teaching both reading and writing in the language classroom might be further informed by the insights that emerge. © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.