| Evaluating English Language Textbooks Tense Distribution against Real Corpus Data: The Didactics Dilemma: Are Textbooks Lying? |
| کد مقاله : 1098-ELTCONF7. (R1) |
| نویسندگان |
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کیمیا عسکریان * Friedrich schiller universität Jena |
| چکیده مقاله |
| Abstract This study tests how well a popular English as a Foreign Language series (New Headway, 5th ed.) reflects real spoken English tense–aspect use. Twenty English as a Foreign Language teachers (Iran, Germany) flagged tense–aspect as systematically oversimplified; we therefore compared tense distributions in coursebook readings/listening transcripts (via Sketch Engine) with contemporary conversation (Spoken BNC2014), using Rstudio for χ² and Fisher’s tests. Tense profiles differed significantly between the textbook and authentic speech (χ²(8)=1250.5, p<2.2×10⁻¹⁶). Several conversational forms were underrepresented in the textbook, including the present perfect progressive (p≈1.5×10⁻⁷) and past perfect progressive (p≈2.2×10⁻⁵); the colloquial future gonna was drastically rarer (p<2.2×10⁻¹⁶). Findings indicate an idealized, more formal tense–aspect distribution in the coursebook which will lead to an unauthentic performance among students. A corpus-informed supplementation and materials revision is recommended to teachers and language schools, so learners encounter frequency patterns closer to real-world English, improving communicative readiness as well as a natural performance. |
| کلیدواژه ها |
| Keywords: Corpus linguistics, Textbook authenticity, Textbook evaluation, Tense–aspect distribution. |
| وضعیت: پذیرفته شده برای ارسال فایل های ارائه پوستر |