This two-part study investigates the word frequency of a total of 1296 vocabularies presented in the textbooks Digilär Tyska 3 and Lieber Deutsch 3 2.0, which correspond to the language proficiency level A2. The aim of the study was to investigate to what extent the designated vocabulary in the two textbooks represents the most frequent words in the German language. To determine this, the study was divided into two parts: In the first part, a quantitative study was conducted to answer the following research question: To what extent does the vocabulary in two German textbooks used in Swedish upper secondary schools represent the most frequent words in the German language? The chapter vocabularies were compared to the corpus-based frequency dictionary A Frequency Dictionary of German which lists the 4034 most frequent words in the German language. This study showed that both textbooks provided a high coverage of high frequency words with a percentage of 78% and 73%. Additionally, the vocabularies belonging to the vocabulary excerises in Digilär Tyska 3 were investigated and the result showed that 62% of these words had a low frequency and were not included in the frequency dictionary. Due to this low frequency coverage in the vocabulary exercises a need for a second part of the study was identified to investigate whether this vocabulary, despite its low frequency would still be important for the students to learn. Therefore, a second study with the following two research questions was conducted: Which themes do the low frequent words belong to? To what extent would each word separately in a low frequent composition come across as high frequent?The analyses in the second part of this study showed that the most dominating themes among the low frequency words were describing words, animals, hobbies and other. Consequently, it was argued that these themes could be relevant to address the students’ varying interests. Furthermore, the frequency analysis of the low frequency compositions showed that 13.8 % of the low frequency words could be seen as high frequent when the frequency of each word within a composition was taken into account. Based on these results, it was argued that students learning German with the help of these textbooks would encounter many high frequency words. However, it was stressed that frequency alone cannot be the only deciding factor when identifying the adequate vocabulary for language learners. Motivational aspects such as incorporating vocabulary belonging to themes that students have an interest in would be another important factor that needs to be taken into account when choosing vocabulary. Furthermore, it was argued that teachers should incorporate strategies for German word composition to increase their students’ vocabulary range.

I detta arbete undersöks två etablerade och en experimentell metod för bestämmande av läsbarheten hos texter. Metoderna undersöks genom att de appliceras på två litterära verk: Atemschaukel av Herta Müller och Berühre mich. Nicht. av Laura Kneidl. Metoderna som undersöks är läsbarhetsformeln Flesch-Reading-Ease (meningslängd och ordlängd) och ordfrekvens (hur vanliga orden är). Dessa båda läsbarhetsundersökningar är väletablerade och har använts flitigt. I detta arbete testas även en ny möjlig läsbarhetsfaktor: Upprepningar av ord, där upprepningar av innehållsord räknas. Resultaten av analyserna enligt de olika metoderna sammanställs och jämförs för att besvara två frågor: 1. Vilket verk förefaller mest lättläst enligt de två etablerade läsbarhetsundersökningarna? 2. Samvarierar mängden upprepningar med resultaten från de andra två läsbarhetsundersökningarna? Resultaten ger en något splittrad bild: Atemschaukel är enligt Flesch-Reading-Ease det mest lättlästa verket, medan ordfrekvensen visar på motsatt förhållande: Berühre mich. Nicht. har de genomsnittligt vanligare orden. Huruvida upprepning av ord har ett samband med läsbarheten är svårt att avgöra baserat enbart på resultaten i denna undersökning. Användandet av språkliga stilfaktorer för eventuellt att läsbarhetstest inte lämpar sig för undersökning av skönlitterära texter.