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Almost all L2 textbooks contain passages which use new vocabulary. There seems to be two ways to go about this (both with pros and cons):

  1. The vocabulary of every passage is independent of previous passages. The student can thus skip chapters they don't want, or study it in whatever order they want. If the student cannot handle a given chapter, the rest of the book may still be useful.

  2. Every passage re-uses the vocabulary of previous passages. This way the student gets greater exposure to vocabulary, but the student is expected not to skip passages (there are dependencies). If the student cannot handle a given chapter, then they may need to give up the book.

Question: Is it best practice for a L2 textbook passage to re-use vocabulary from previous passages?

In particular, I'm interested in both what students prefer (after all, if they experience "burn out", they might just give up), and what is better pedagogically.

Rebecca J. Stones
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  • For option 1, is it safe to assume that basic vocabulary is re-used, such as "the", "a", "and", etc? If not, I would think the first option is not even possible for most languages. – AML Jun 06 '22 at 13:04
  • Here I'm envisaging an intermediate or advanced textbook, and the textbook introduces a few hundred new words, and maybe 30 new words per passage. – Rebecca J. Stones Jun 06 '22 at 21:22
  • If it's a language learning instruction manual, e.g. something akin to Assimil, I'd prefer to read it front-to-back, in order. If it's a textbook about some topic that happens to be in the L2, then I'd prefer the option to read it in any order. – Brandin Jun 07 '22 at 13:45

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