The evolution of lexical richness in Chinese language textbooks is closely intertwined with national education and social-cultural development. This article is based on the Chinese primary and secondary school Chinese language textbook corpus from 1949 to 2025, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to systematically examine the historical evolution characteristics and influencing factors of lexical richness in textbooks. Research has found that: (1) Lexical richness presents a phased development: in primary school, the number of semantic categories in 1955 was mostly single digit to double digit, with a significant increase after 1978 (mainly three digit), reaching a peak in 1987 (some exceeding 600), and fluctuating upward after 2000; In the early stage of junior high school, the values were relatively high (mostly in the three digits in 1960, with some exceeding 1000), and after 1978, they fluctuated and remained high. (2) There is a significant difference in grade levels, with the number of semantic categories generally higher in junior high school than in primary school, reflecting the progressive nature of educational content. (3) The evolution trajectory is driven by multiple factors such as social culture, education policies, and cognitive laws, manifested as a transition from political discourse dominance (1949-1977) to knowledge system diversification (1978-1999), and then to a balance between cultural connotations and cognitive adaptability (after 2000). The study also constructs a lexical richness evaluation system (quantity, type, semantic dimension), combined with Type-Token Ratio (TTR) and semantic category statistics, to reveal the nonlinear development law of the vocabulary ecology in textbooks, providing theoretical basis and practical reference for optimizing textbook writing and promoting language proficiency development.

Xiaoxuan Zheng, Yongquan Li. Study on the Evolution of Lexical Richness in Chinese Language Textbooks for Primary and Secondary Schools Since the Founding of New China. Frontiers in Educational Research (2025), Vol. 8, Issue 10: 1-7. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2025.081001.

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