This study is a critical evaluation of the vocabularyrnitems found in the English for New Ethiopia (ENE) seriesrnthat is used as text-books for teaching English in allrnEthiopian senior High Schools. Evaluation is requiredrnmainly t o see how relevant the selected vocabulary is tornthe students at this l evel.rnThis paper then evaluates (a) the size of vocabularyrnitems selected; (b) the frequency level of the vocabularyrnitems; (c) the gradati on and interaction of the items, andrn(d) the codability of the selected words, which in particularrnd eals with the content-concept of the vocabulary items inrnrelation to the standard of the students .â€¢rnThe method of comparing and contrasting is applied tornevaluate the relevance of the items. And the major materialrnused for comparing the target vocabulary with the commonrnStandard English Vocabulary is Thorndike and Lorge ' s standardrnfrequency-list which was produced in 1944. Besides, otherrnrelevant references are also made use of as they are needed.rnFinally the result of the investigation has revealed thatrnthere are 1190 vocabulary items altogether, including expressionalrnphrases, in the ENE series for grades 9 to 12. Thisrnindicates the size of the vocabulary to be too small for thernfour year study. And only 49.41% of this total sum is foundrnto have more than 20 times frequency of occurrence per million words in the use of Standard English. This means that therngreater part of the selected items is difficult to learn.rnOn the other hand gradation of the items i s found torntake uneven shape in some cases. For instance, more wordsrnare put in the lower grade ENE seri es than are found in thernupper grade books .rnIt was also discovered in this study that about 14%rnof the total sum of the target vocabulary items is composedrnof technical terms, most of them very difficult to learnrnfor they are almost impractical for the daily life of thernstudents.rnGenerally, the result of this study has indicated 'rncertain short-comings of the target vocabttlaT,y. And, hencerncertain constructive recommendations are given in the conclusionrnso that they might contribute to the reshaping ofrnthe vocabulary in such a way that it facilitates the learningrnof English as a second language in the Ethiopian seniorrnHigh Schools.