Lexical loads of mathematica discourse for young learners: A step towards vocabulary evaluation of multi semiotic discourse. This study was an attempt to examine the vocabulary demands of the discourse (MD) written for young learners (YLs). The data for this research were two sets of books - one for the Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (L2) and one for the Singaporean learners of English as a first language (L1). | Journal of Inquiry into Languages and Cultures ISSN 2525-2674 Vol 1, No 3, 2017 LEXICAL LOADS OF MATHEMATICA DISCOURSE FOR YOUNG LEARNERS: A STEP TOWARDS VOCABULARY EVALUATION OF MULTI-SEMIOTIC DISCOURSE Ton Nu My Nhat* Quy Nhon University Received: 20/09/2017; Revised: 26/10/2017; Accepted: 27/12/2017 Abstract: This study was an attempt to examine the vocabulary demands of the mathematic discourse (MD) written for young learners (YLs). The data for this research were two sets of books - one for the Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (L2) and one for the Singaporean learners of English as a first language (L1). To find out more about the lexical profiles of this genre, a total of 1,729 mathematic problems from two series of four books for primary school children, consisting of 15,545 running words, were analyzed to determine the vocabulary size necessary for comprehension and the potential to learn vocabulary incidentally through doing mathematics in English. The article concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications of this study for material designers and teachers of MD for YLs. Key words: lexical coverage, mathematic discourse, multisemiotic discourse, vocabulary size, word frequency 1. Introduction Comprehension research has shown that besides the other factors that may have an impact on reading and listening comprehension such as background knowledge, syntactic structures, and/or discourse structure, vocabulary proves to be the most influential (Laufer & Sim 1985, Webb & Rodgers 2009). Studies of lexical coverage have indicated that there is typically a positive correlation between vocabulary size and degree of comprehension (Laufer, 1989, 1992; Laufer & Ravenhorst, 2010): comprehension is likely to increase as the proportion of known words in a text rises. The justification for this is that the fewer words within a text there are, the fewer comprehension gaps follow and the better understanding is achieved (Webb & .
