A Corpus Analysis of Polysemy in CEFR-based English Textbooks

Despite the considerable number of studies on vocabulary and sense relations such as polysemy, they are confined to comparing vocabulary learning methods and strategies and examining the usefulness of certain sense relations in acquiring L2 vocabulary. Until now, no attempt has been made to analyse polysemy in English textbooks used in non-native English contexts. The aim of the current article was to explore the high usage of the most frequently used words from the selected English textbooks in real-life English and to determine the extent to which polysemy is incorporated in the selected English textbooks. The data was collected from two textbooks: _Close-up_ (Intermediate Secondary) and _Full Blast Plus 4_ (Upper Secondary). The _Sketch Engine_ word list tool was used to determine the top 100 most frequently used words in the first sub-corpus, _Close-up_ (Intermediate Secondary), and the top 100 most frequently used words in the second sub-corpus, _Full Blast Plus 4_ (Upper Secondary). The use of the chosen words in the _British National Corpus_ (BNC) was explored using the _Sketch Engine_ to determine whether they are the most commonly used in English. _WordNet_ was also used to determine the polysemy and frequency of the words under study. The findings revealed the top 100 most frequently used words in _Close-up_ and _Full Blast Plus 4_ have high frequency levels (ranks) in the _BNC_, yet 65 of the top 100 most frequently used words in both Close-up and Full Blast Plus 4 overlapped despite the level difference. Furthermore, polysemy is only lightly emphasised in the textbooks concerned. The results of the present study have important implications for second and foreign language learning research and education.