Paper Title
An Assessment of the Graphophonemic Difficulty Level of English Words in Elementary Schools in Japan

Abstract
This study conducted an analysis of 640 words frequently used in English classes for Japanese elementary school learners, focusing on both semantic and pronunciation aspects. The elementary objective was to evaluate the appropriateness of these words for learners in the initial stages of acquiring English as a foreign language. The findings revealed that approximately 70% of the vocabulary belonged to the most frequently used 1,000 words (K1) and the second thousand words (K2) levels. In contrast,only minimal 2% (seven words) were identified as academiclevel vocabulary with the remaining 30% of the words exhibited varying levels of difficulty. Overall, the study suggests that the difficulty level of the vocabulary presented in these textbooks is relatively low. More than one third of all syllables, however, were pronounced in ways not typically found in the Japanese language, meaning that Japanese learners may find them challenging to pronounce due to the absence of equivalent pronunciations in Japanese. These findings suggest that careful consideration of word selection is essential in the development of future English language materials for beginning learners in Japan. In particular, it is important to ensure that even words that are considered easy according to difficulty assessments are selected with attention to whether their syllable pronunciation aligns with familiar phonemes. Keywords -Graph Phonemic Awareness, English Textbook, EFL.