Register variation in school EFL textbooks

Abstract

This study applies additive Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) (Biber 1988) to explore the linguistic characteristics of ‘school English’ or ‘textbook English’. It seeks to find out how text registers commonly featured in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks differ from comparable registers found outside the EFL classroom. To this end, a Textbook English Corpus (TEC) of 43 coursebooks used in European schools is mobilised. The texts from six textbook register subcorpora and three target language corpora are mapped onto Biber’s (1998) ‘Involved vs. Informational’ dimension of General English. Register accounts for 63% of the variance in these dimension scores in the TEC. Additional factors such as textbook level, series and country of publication/use only play a marginal role in mediating textbook register variation. Textbook dialogues score considerably lower than the Spoken BNC2014, whereas Textbook Fiction scores closest to its corresponding reference Youth Fiction Corpus. Pedagogical and methodological implications are discussed.

A Multidimensional Analysis of a High-Stakes English Listening Test: A Corpus-Based Approach

“…Two different methods were used to calculate the dimension scores: first, computing them through transforming language scores to z-scores and deducting the sum of the zscores of negatively loaded metrics from that of positively loaded indices (e.g., [4,10,14,64,65]); second, calculating them by choosing Thurstone as the Estimation Method at the end of exploratory factor analysis (e.g., [66,67]). After obtaining the two sets of scores, a paired samples t-test was performed to determine if there were significant differences between the dimension scores obtained using different score estimation methods.…”

“…This dimension was the main focus of Le Foll's [64] study of the variation in EFL coursebooks used in schools. The author argued that this dimension represents an opposition between "informational/literate/nominal" and "involved/oral/verbal", and this dimension has consistently shown itself to be the best and most reliable indicator of variation in full MDAs created after 1988 across a wide range of languages and registers [80].…”