Collocation Research Based on Corpora Collected from Secondary School Textbooks in Japan and in the UK
Taeko Koya · Dialogue A Journal of Mormon Thought · 2004
The aim of this paper is to analyze verb-noun English collocations extracted from a history textbook for secondary school pupils used in the UK and from English textbooks for 10th graders in Japan. To conduct the research on collocation, the following research questions are set up: (a) What kind of collocations are used in the history textbook? (b) How many collocations are used in the history textbook? (c) How often do the same collocations appear in the textbook? and (d) What are differences between collocations in the history textbook in the UK and those in English textbooks in Japan? The main finding shows that collocations are disregarded in both textbooks in terms of the kinds and the number of collocations. It may be natural that in history textbooks collocations are not so often used to explain various events in world history. However, English textbooks should much more pay attention to usage of collocations to cultivate learners’ better command of English. In conclusion, English textbooks for 10th graders in Japan should include more variety of collocations to help the learners to develop larger vocabulary as the importance of collocation teaching for learners has been emphasized for the last two decades.