期刊名称：International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities
印刷版ISSN：2250-0715
电子版ISSN：2248-9010
出版年度：2012
卷号：3
期号：2
页码：152-160
出版社：International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities
摘要：Knowledge of vocabulary is essential for the learning of a second language, as vocabulary is the building blocks for the language. Mastery of vocabulary is particularly important in the TOEFL tests especially in the reading component as it comprises approximately 25 percent of the entire reading test. Hence, this paper seeks to examine the most frequently used content words as well as its types in the TOEFL course books to aid students in the TOEFL tests. The digitized texts were analyzed using WordSmith 4.0, RANGE Software and The Compleat Lexical Tutor v 6.2 (Cobb, 1997). The findings indicate the types of vocabulary educators and learners should focus on. A list of 100 TOEFL technical content words based on its significant frequency in the passages are created from the target corpus is shown in the appendix. This study is believed to help educators and the TOEFL test-takers to understand the nature of the TOEFL reading tests better especially in terms of the nature of TOEFL vocabulary. From this study, educators should focus more on teaching of the words from the General Service List (GSL) and Academic Word List (AWL) in the TOEFL reading tests as they still comprise most part of the texts in the passages rather than focusing on the unpredictable technical and low frequency words.
关键词：English for the TOEFL; the TOEFL Vocabulary; Corpus of the TOEFL.
