Brandenburg-Weeks, Tara and Albatool Mohammed Abalkheel. 2021.

“The Giver: A Corpus-

Based Analysis of Word Frequencies.” The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies,
27(3): 215-227.

 The Giver is a juvenile novel written by American author Lois Lowry.

 A corpus-based method is used to determine the types and frequency of
vocabulary provided by The Giver.
 89.07% of the vocabulary in The Giver corresponds to the list of high-frequency
words.
 The use of compound words, prefixes and suffixes can increase comprehension
of the text if combined with vocabulary instruction.
 Vocabulary growth is important for language development and comprehension
Vocabulary knowledge alone is not sufficient to master reading, but it plays a
critical role.
 Between 3,000 and 5,000 word families are necessary to understand a text well;
identifying key words from these families in a text aids comprehension.
 Language learners need to know at least 4,000 to 5,000 words for academic text
comprehension and 6,000 to 8,000 words for optimal performance.
 76.1% of common words in academic texts are in the 1,000 to 2,000 word lists,
10% are in the Academic Word List (AWL), and 13.9% are low-frequency words.
 Vocabulary frequency influences learner word knowledge, but it is difficult to
establish a specific number of words needed for adequate comprehension.
 Corpus linguistic analysis methods allow teachers to examine texts and define
objectives around them.
 The study analyzes vocabulary thresholds and the degree of lexical knowledge
needed by EFL/ESL learners for comprehension.
 The study analyzes word frequencies in The Giver, which is a required text for
an upper-intermediate "Reading and Vocabulary" course in an Intensive English
Program (IEP) at a large Midwestern university.
 Selected portions of The Giver were analyzed with the VocabProfilers tool,
based on the Lexical Profiler by Laufer, Nation.
 The corpus focuses on chapters 1, 3, 15, and 21 of the novel.
 Readers learn these words early in the book and see them repeatedly.
 Low-frequency words tend to have azr collocations, which presents difficulties
for language learners trying to acquire generalizable collocations when reading
The Giver as a language learning text.
 Elements that can serve for better reading comprehension are: glossaries with
explanations, notes, definitions, illustrations with supporting text.
 Language learners need to understand 95-99% of the words in a text to
comprehend it, The Giver novel contains a higher percentage of high frequency
words (89.07%) than the average academic text (86.1%) so it helps to have a
larger specialized vocabulary.
 Language learners need academic support to understand low-frequency words,
the unique vocabulary of low-frequency words is an essential aid.
 1K, 2K and AWL vocabulary lists should be taught directly in the classroom.
 The study proposes the use of a specific text as it has a rich academic lexicon,
but it is necessary to have other sources of help in order to have alternatives,
since human beings are naturally curious and a single option may be
unattractive.