ODTSETSEG YADAMSUREN -

CORPUS ANALYSIS OF COLLOCATIONS IN EFL TEXTBOOKS : TEACHING VOCABULARY

Studies of collocations have found that English collocations are a challenge for L2 learners, and that collocation knowledge is incremental and learned through sufficient input and repeated encounters (e.g., Nesselhauf, 2003; Wang, 2007). In EFL contexts, textbooks constitute majority of linguistic input, thus the present study analyzed collocations in a series of six English textbooks, used in public secondary schools in Mongolia, addressing the distribution of total collocations, their repetition, and proportion of congruent and non-congruent collocations within and across the textbooks. Analysis of 335 different types of verb-noun collocations found in the textbook corpus of 35,685 words showed (1) a fairly consistent increase in number of different types of collocations across the six textbooks, (2) an insufficient repetition of collocations within and across the textbooks, and (3) a 6:1 ratio of congruent and non-congruent collocations across the textbooks. Implications for learning/teaching collocations using corpus and materials designing are discussed.

Odtsetseg Yadamsuren is a lecturer at the National University of Mongolia. She holds a MA in TESOL from Kent Sate University, USA. Her main research interests include corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics, and English for specific/academic purposes.