Exploring the (Un)‎ suitability of the amount of vocabulary input in the middle school textbooks : a critical analysis of the amount of lexical words in my book of English, year one and my book of English, year two

الملخص EN

The present article aimed at evaluating the suitability of vocabulary content in the Algerian middle school textbooks "my book of English, year one" (MBE1) and "my book of English, year two" (MBE2) with a specific focus on the analysis of the amount of lexical words.

this investigation was guided by three questions : (1) is the amount of lexical words included in MBE1 suitable to first year middle school learners' age and language level ? (2) is the amount of lexical words included in MBE2 suitable to second year middle school learners' age and language level ? (3) is the transition from a sequence to another within each textbook and from MBE1 to MBE2 appropriate ? in order to answer these questions, corpora and sub corpora of lexical words in the sequences / textbooks were compiled.

the analyses were done using computer software "complete lexical tutor" and manually when required.

the findings revealed that the textbooks are lexically overloaded, especially MBE2.

more specifically, the textbooks introduced a huge number of lexical words, of which most of them are not repeated / recycled sufficiently and of which a significant percentage consists of new / almost new words, which makes them unsuitable to the age and level of the students.

furthermore, the findings indicated that the transition from MBE1 to MBE2, on the one hand, and the transition from a sequence to another, on the other hand, is totally ineffective : neither MBE2 as a whole is built on MBE1, nor each sequence is built on the previous sequence(s).