Abstract: Now that the latest technology can process huge amounts of data that was previously unimaginable, scientists can challenge established beliefs and prac-tices in many information-related fields. Xiao et al. (2017) made such a challenge, focusing on the effectiveness of English textbooks popularly used in Chinese primary schools. They first assumed that pupils’ word recognition rate would equal the cov-erage rate of their textbook vocabulary lists. Then they used four reference corpora to calculate the latter, one of which was self-developed with an automatic web crawler. Finally, they concluded that textbook vocabulary lists were limited in timeliness, that the word recognition increment of the 6th graders was relatively small, and that word selection in textbook compilation should be adjusted. We would like to comment on their study from a Zipfian perspective as applied linguists in language acquisition.
While we agree that traditional word frequency lists should be regularly reevaluated with the help of the latest information technology, we hold the fol-lowing five points: (1) Sampling issues are important when constructing reference corpora; (2) Zipf’s law can provide evidential support for interpreting word frequencies and vocabulary list analysis; (3) Various practical constraints should be considered if vocabu-lary size in textbooks should be expanded; (4) The word twelfth should be kept in the list; (5) Joint attention should be given by scholars of various backgrounds for textbook compilation.

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