Abstract
The present study investigates the extent to which lexical and grammatical collocations are used in Iranian high school English textbooks, compared with the American English File books. To achieve the purposes of this study, this study had to be carried out in two phases. In the first phase, the content of the instructional textbooks, that is, American English File book series, Book 2 and Iranian high school English Book 3, were analyzed to find the frequencies and proportions of the collocations used in the textbooks. Since the instructional textbooks used in the two teaching environments (i.e., Iranian high schools and language institutes) were not equal with regard to the density of texts, from each textbook just the first 6000 words, content words as well as function words, were considered. Then, the frequencies of the collocations among the first 6000 words in high school English Book 3 and American English File Book 2 were determined.The results of the statistical analyses revealed that the two text book series differ marginally in terms of frequency and type of collocations. Major difference existed between them when it came to lexical collocations in American English File book 2.
Highlights
After grammar to which a lot of attention has been paid by different teaching approaches, the other language area which has been considered prominently during the last decades is vocabulary learning and teaching
The findings of this study showed that both grammatical and lexical collocations were presented more in American English File Book 2 than high school English Text Book 3, and the participants from institute outperformed the participants from high school in collocation test
The results showed that the frequency and proportion of collocations in the high school and pre-university English textbooks were generally lower than those in the New Interchange book series, and it was indicated that the learners studying the New Interchange book series in the private language institutes had a better performance on both lexical and grammatical collocation tests
Summary
After grammar to which a lot of attention has been paid by different teaching approaches, the other language area which has been considered prominently during the last decades is vocabulary learning and teaching. Conklin and Schmitt (2007) referred to word combination and formulaic language as one entity, but Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) mentioned that formulaic language has different categories namely: free word combination, idioms and collocation. Each one of these categories is discussed below. Gelbukh et al (2004) mentioned that compared to other words, some words may have a broader compatibility, for example, ‘to see’ can be combined with practically any physical object; while ‘to read’ only with something that contains written material. According to Gabriella (1994), in this way Firth distinguished “meaning by collocation” from both the “conceptual” and the “contextual” meaning of words
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
