A Corpus-based Approach to English Dative Constructions and Its Implications for EFL Textbooks

This study investigates the extent to which EFL textbooks used in Korea reflect frequency patterns of the English dative constructions in natural use. For this purpose, the study first measures frequency patterns of five selected English dative verbs occurring in the prepositional dative (PD) and the double object dative (DD) constructions in two corpora and nine EFL textbooks. It then compares the results from the corpora and those from the textbooks. The comparison reveals that the textbooks show a relatively high frequency of the PD construction, whereas the two corpora show a strong bias toward the DD construction. The study ends with a discussion of implications the difference has for EFL teaching and EFL textbook developments.