"This study focuses on evaluating vocabulary in textbook for elementary school students. It aims to answer three questions about the vocabulary: First, how far does the vocabulary in the textbook cover the vocabulary in General Service List of English Words (GSL), a word list suggested for beginners of English? Second, is the frequency of the vocabulary in the textbook suitable with the theory about it in teaching vocabulary? Third, are the written input of the exercises in the textbook parallel to the theory of teaching vocabulary?
Data were collected from the vocabularies and the written input in the textbook Get Ready for Beginners, published by Erlangga in 1996. This book is a textbook for elementary school students. Other data were collected from the words in the GSL word list.
Data were analysed in three ways. First, the vocabulary in the textbook and in GSL were compared and analysed by using two computer programs. The first program, Rimal.BAS, was used to gain the comparison between the vocabulary in the textbook and GSL. The second program, Rima2.BAS, was used to see the context of the vocabulary. With this program, the writer can sort out any ambiguous words. Second, by using program Rimal.BAS, the frequency of each word was counted and described. The vocabulary in the textbook were categorized into words with frequency>6 and words with frequency <6. Third, the written input in the textbook was identified and sorted.
This research produces description as follows: the vocabulary in the textbook covers 80,135% of the vocabulary in the GSL; in analysing the frequency, the writer found out that 86,90% of the whole words in the textbook. occur more than 6 times, but only 76,469% of the words covered in GSL occur the same; The written input in the textbook covers 87,20% of the theory about teaching vocabulary and about 91% of the written input suit to the goal of the lesson unit. However, about 37,93% of the dialogues in the textbook do not meet the requirements of good dialogues.
The writer suggests some revisions of the book. First, the writer of the book should add more occurrences of the words with high frequency as suggested by GSL. Second, there should be less number of names of people in the textbook and a story making of the characters to make this book interesting. Third, there should be a revision of some of the written input, especially dialog. Most of the dialogues are not good.
In spite of the fact that the textbook Get ready for Beginners fulfils the requirements needed about selecting vocabulary and the frequency of the words, dealing with the designing of the written input of the vocabulary, the writer strongly suggests revisions of the textbook."
Depok: Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Budaya Universitas Indonesia, 2004
