1 Introduction

This section introduces the importance of Classical Chinese vocabulary teaching in high school Chinese language education. It points out that after the promulgation of the "2017 Curriculum Standards," addressing students' difficulties with Classical Chinese vocabulary and enhancing their language literacy have become significant topics. It also emphasizes the necessity of compiling Classical Chinese word lists and highlights the important practical teaching implications of recompiling a high school Classical Chinese word list adapted to the new textbooks following the implementation of the nationally compiled high school Chinese language textbooks.

2 Literature Review

This section discusses the two main levels of Classical Chinese word list compilation in China: the official level and the researcher level. Official word lists are often attached to textbooks or syllabi and have been continuously refined over time. However, since 2003, curriculum standards have not included word lists, leading to a lack of teaching guidance for educators and increased learning burdens for students. Researcher-level word lists are mostly based on textbook compilation and serve as references for teaching, though their compilation standards still require improvement.

3 Corpus Construction Process

This chapter details the corpus construction process in the study of compiling a high school Classical Chinese word list. First, it introduces the sources and processing of the corpus, including Classical Chinese texts from the nationally compiled high school Chinese language textbooks and the "2017 Curriculum Standards." By merging duplicate texts and integrating different passages, a corpus containing 40 Classical Chinese texts (or excerpts) was established and categorized by theme. Next, it discusses text segmentation, comparing the effectiveness of segmentation tools such as Jiayan, Trankit, and Stanza. Ultimately, the Jiayan segmentation tool was selected, and the segmentation results were manually reviewed. Finally, a Classical Chinese corpus for the college entrance examination was established as a reference corpus for subsequent validation of the word list's effectiveness.

4 Vocabulary Screening

This section elaborates on the vocabulary screening process in compiling a high school Classical Chinese word list. First, the self-developed "Word List Generation Software" was used to conduct word frequency statistics on the segmented Classical Chinese corpus, yielding 20,928 tokens and 4,677 types. During the screening process, four key factors were considered: frequency and occurrence rate, distribution rate, usage degree, and subjective criteria. For frequency and occurrence rate, the commonality of words was assessed by calculating their frequency across different categories. Words in the list had a total frequency of no less than 10 and an average occurrence rate of no less than 0.5 per thousand words. Distribution rate measures how often a word appears in different categories of texts, with a required distribution rate of no less than 3 for words in the list. Usage degree was calculated using a specific formula, taking into account both frequency and distribution rate, with a minimum usage degree of 8. Words were ranked from highest to lowest usage degree. Subjective criteria involved removing specific words such as personal and place names while retaining culturally rich vocabulary. Ultimately, 203 Classical Chinese words were selected, including 199 monosyllabic words and 4 disyllabic words, and these words were annotated in detail.

5 Evaluation Test

The 203-word list and the 135-word list were evaluated through coverage testing and analysis of the proportion of words in different frequency bands. Coverage testing showed that the 203-word list achieved higher coverage than the 135-word list in both the high school Classical Chinese corpus and the college entrance examination Classical Chinese corpus. Even when comparing the top 135 words from both lists, the 203-word list still demonstrated higher coverage. In terms of the proportion of words in different frequency bands, the 203-word list had the largest proportion of mid-frequency words, with a smaller gap between high-frequency and low-frequency words, whereas the 135-word list had the largest proportion of low-frequency words. This indicates that the 203-word list has a more balanced distribution of vocabulary, covering more commonly used Classical Chinese words, which validates its theoretical value.

6 Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the multifaceted value of the corpus-based 203-word list for high school Classical Chinese teaching. It includes helping teachers grasp vocabulary trends, promoting precise and scientific teaching methods, advancing vocabulary quantitative research, and providing a basis for textbook compilation and evaluation. It also emphasizes that the word list needs to be tested and refined in practice.