Idioms in Textbooks : a Corpus-driven Approach to Idioms in Finnish Upper Secondary School Textbooks of English
Ikonen, Henna (2021)
2021
Kielten maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in Languages
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2021-05-14
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202104223318
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202104223318
Tiivistelmä
The aim of this master’s thesis is to study idioms in vocabulary lists of two Finnish upper secondary school textbook series. It studies three topics related to them. Firstly, it examines and compares the number of idioms in the chosen textbooks. Secondly, the types of idioms are looked into more closely. Lastly, the frequency of the found idioms is checked from two corpora. This is seen as an indication of the authenticity of these idioms. The research questions are the following: 1) How do the textbook series differ, if at all, concerning the number of the idioms? 2) Which idioms are included in two Finnish upper secondary school textbook series of English? 3) How well do the textbooks represent authentic language usage?
The present study is a corpus-based study. The corpus data is collected from two widely used corpora; Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in the study. The two textbook series chosen for the present study are On Track and Insights. Three books from each textbook series were examined and the idioms were searched manually form the textbooks.
The results of the study show that On Track textbooks include more idioms in their vocabulary lists than Insights textbooks. More variation was to be seen among On Track textbooks regarding the number of idioms, while Insights textbooks had idioms spread more evenly. Concerning the types of idioms, it was noticed that there was not a single idiom found in On Track textbooks’ vocabulary lists that would be found in the vocabulary lists of Insights textbooks. Lastly, the results indicate that the textbook series prefer idioms that are more frequent in American English. In addition, the study found out that idioms in On Track textbooks are in general more frequent in both corpus data than those of Insights indicating that On Track has managed to choose idioms which are more frequently used in contemporary English. The study suggests that teaching materials creators as well as language teachers utilize more corpora while creating materials for language teaching and learning.
The present study is a corpus-based study. The corpus data is collected from two widely used corpora; Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in the study. The two textbook series chosen for the present study are On Track and Insights. Three books from each textbook series were examined and the idioms were searched manually form the textbooks.
The results of the study show that On Track textbooks include more idioms in their vocabulary lists than Insights textbooks. More variation was to be seen among On Track textbooks regarding the number of idioms, while Insights textbooks had idioms spread more evenly. Concerning the types of idioms, it was noticed that there was not a single idiom found in On Track textbooks’ vocabulary lists that would be found in the vocabulary lists of Insights textbooks. Lastly, the results indicate that the textbook series prefer idioms that are more frequent in American English. In addition, the study found out that idioms in On Track textbooks are in general more frequent in both corpus data than those of Insights indicating that On Track has managed to choose idioms which are more frequently used in contemporary English. The study suggests that teaching materials creators as well as language teachers utilize more corpora while creating materials for language teaching and learning.