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Developing Wordlist for Primary Science Textbooks in Dual Language Programme

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Dual Language Programme (DLP) is an initiative programme to produce students who can understand and communicate in English language. The implementation of the programme in a school is optional, which means the decision to have a DLP in a particular school is left to the school headmaster and parents, as parent groups played a critical role to bring back English as a medium of instruction in the national school system. However, one of main issues in the DLP implementation is students’ linguistic readiness to learn in English, particularly students in primary school. This paper discusses how language used in science textbooks (Years 1-6) were analysed using the readability reference manager Text Inspector to generate the wordlist. Thus, this study examines the readability of the textbooks used in primary school to understand the level of difficulty of the language. The preliminary finding showed that the readability of primary science textbooks is way beyond CEFR A2. Hence, this study proposes to generate a wordlist for science textbooks in DLP in primary schools based on CEFR readability levels.
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