Before September, 1999, the required textbooks for senior high school students were the centralized ones edited by the National Institute for Compilation and Translation. The centralization of teaching materials does have its own advantages, such as less preparation time for teaching, fewer problems of content censorship, and more controlled battery of testing items, in terms of quantity, quality, and level (Yang, 1998)
Despite these merits listed, criticisms of the centralization of teaching materials, however, have been discussed. As Chen, C. T. (2000) listed in his master’s thesis:
(1) The centralized materials may fail to meet the individual of needs all the students and their current level since their English proficiency level varies greatly from city to country, or even from one person to another.
(2) All students around Taiwan will be badly influenced if the centralized materials are poorly designed. (p.3)
Therefore, the liberation of textbook adoption and development has finally reached a consensus and commenced from senior high school textbooks in 1999 and the trial implementation of junior high school textbook liberation ensued in 2000.
Do the virtues of liberation outweigh those of centralization? The final conclusion can not be drawn yet since it has only been carried out for less than a decade. New problems arising from the new policy, contrarily, have manifested themselves. Lack of consistency, in terms of learning load and difficulty, between the junior high school textbooks and senior high school textbooks could be the most
evident one.
Before the textbook liberation, in accordance with curriculum guidelines drawn up by the Ministry of Education (1994, 1996), the junior high school students should learn 800 basic words and related phrases from the required English classes and could learn 900 basic words and related phrases from the elective English classes within three years, namely six semesters. As for senior high school students, they are asked to learn 2,800 words before graduation (See Table 1).
Table 1. The Vocabulary Load Regulated by MOE (1994, 1996)
Junior
It appears as though the seemingly reasonable vocabulary load in Table 1 contradicts what has been complained. Nevertheless, the College Entrance Examination Center (CEEC) has conducted the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which excludes the third-year curriculum, based on a vocabulary of approximately 4,000 words and the Appointed Subject Test according to a vocabulary of 7,390 since 1994.
Furthermore, in the light of the Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines carried out in 2001, a junior high school graduate should have 1,000 productive vocabulary at least and
another 1,000 receptive vocabulary if possible. Consequently, no matter which textbooks, the centralized ones or the commercial ones, are adopted, the vocabulary gap seems to be inevitable due to the backwash effect, the effect of testing on teaching and learning (Hughes, 1999). No wonder not only the teachers but also the students make considerable comments on the improper transition of the English textbooks between junior high schools and senior high schools (Chen, C.H., 2000; Chen, C. T, 2000).
As the suggestion from the teacher subjects in the research done by Chen, C. H.
(2000), more attention should be paid to the continuity between the junior and senior high school English textbooks, especially at the freshman stage (p. 71), which, as mentioned above, could be an important turning point for many English learners.
Besides, Chen’s survey also reveals that most teachers (86.4%) would stick to the same set of textbooks in the following semester for consistency. Therefore, the selection of textbooks, particularly the textbooks for the first semester in senior high school, plays an extraordinarily significant role in avoiding the negative influence of the vocabulary gap and in generating students’ interest in learning English.
Based on Chang’s (2002) investigation, only a few of senior high school teachers have ideas of the words used in junior high school English textbooks. Since the current junior high school textbooks are published by a number of companies, the ignorance of the teaching materials at adjacent levels should be understandable. Also, only if the textbook publishers take their responsibilities to publish well-designed textbooks with consistency could the indifference to the connective textbooks be acceptable.
Unfortunately, as what mentioned by Chen, C. H. (2000) and the editor lists in senior high school textbooks I examined, nearly no publishers have invited qualified and experienced junior high school English teachers to participate the editing or to
play the role as the textbook writing consultants. The three most popular companies editing junior high school textbooks are Kang-Hsuan, Nan-Yi, and Han-Lin while the three major publishers of senior high school English textbooks are Far-East, Sanmin, and Lungteng. Whether all the publishers edit senior high school textbooks with thorough understanding of the ones for junior high schools or not might remain suspicious and vice versa.
Now that the only way for teachers to exert control over what vocabulary to teach is through textbook selection. On the one hand, without a clear understanding of how vocabulary in textbooks is designed, it could be quite difficult for the teachers to evaluate textbooks. On the other hand, many teachers judge the vocabulary of a textbook simply by scanning through the vocabulary list in the sample textbook before they vote for their favorite choice (Chang, 2002). Not until they teach through the whole textbook would they realize the exact vocabulary load of it. That explains why not only the teacher subjects and also student subjects grouse about the
“unlisted” new words, such as those in vocabulary explanations or example sentences in both the researches pursued by Chen, C.H. (2000) and Chen, C. T. (2000).
Vocabulary was considered by Read (2000) as the top consideration in language teaching and learning. By the same token, Nation (2001) claimed vocabulary as the most significant predictor of overall readability. He brought up a suitable threshold,
“all or nothing threshold,” for language learners, which is around 80% known vocabulary coverage in a certain text. Beneath the level, no adequate comprehension is achieved. Therefore, problems could arise in English teaching and learning as there are more and more, perhaps too many, words for senior high school students,
particularly the freshmen, to acquire.