An analysis of lexicogrammatical development in English textbooks in Turkey: A usage-based construction grammar approach

This article measures the syntactic development indices in grade 5-12 English textbooks in Turkey. Through a usage-based construction grammar approach, it argues that the textbooks show an inconsistent development in verb-argument constructions (VAC) and other usage-based indices. The study employs...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gedik Tan Arda
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2021-10-01
Series:ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2022-0002
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Summary:This article measures the syntactic development indices in grade 5-12 English textbooks in Turkey. Through a usage-based construction grammar approach, it argues that the textbooks show an inconsistent development in verb-argument constructions (VAC) and other usage-based indices. The study employs an automatic software tool that detects variations in these indices and runs a statistical analysis on a corpus compiled by the author. Statistically significant results demonstrate that textbooks lack lexicogrammatical variation. As such, learners who use these textbooks are likely to experience a limited array of VACs that are limited in lemma-construction combinations. Findings also indicate that learners may not be exposed to the conventional usage patterns and frequencies of VACs when compared against a reference corpus. These findings may have an influence on the learners’ generalization process, their low-proficiency level in English, and poor idiomatic uses of the language.
ISSN:2303-4858