A Study on Routine Formulas and Downgraders of Request Act in Middle School English Textbooks

A Study on Routine Formulas and Downgraders of Request Act in Middle School English Textbooks

This paper examines middle school English textbooks to ascertain if they appropriately reflect the kinds and frequencies of routine formulas and downgraders of request act used by English native speakers. For the analysis, 9 series of currently available middle school English textbooks under the 7^th National Curriculum were selected. Each series of textbooks contains 3 school grade textbooks as middle school English I, middle school English 2, and middle school English 3. The results show that most textbooks demonstrate an adequate reflection of the actual use of request strategies and downgraders by English native speakers, while several textbooks represent some deficiency. The deficiency partly comes from the lack of diversity in the interlocutors' relationships, and it results in insufficient language data in the kinds and frequencies of request strategies and downgraders in the textbooks. More polite forms of commonly used routine formulas are not presented adequately in many textbooks. It is suggested that textbook developers and English educators need to work out countermeasures for the textbooks which appeared to have insufficient authentic language data.