A Corpus-based Research on High Frequency Delexical Verb Collocations: English Textbooks and National English Listening Tests

This study aims to investigate how medium-strength collocations, taking the form of high frequency delexical verbs followed by NP, are used in middle school English textbooks, National English Listening Tests and the BNC spoken in order to examine if authentic delexical Verb+NP expressions were appropriately used in students’ learning and assessment materials. For this, the study constructed corpora using twenty-four textbooks based on the National English Curriculum and National English Listening Tests in the years from 2011 to 2017. The analysis of the corpora revealed: First, the name of disease expressions of‘ HAVE+NP’ in the first grade English textbooks accounted for 14.5%. However, none of these expressions were included in the Listening Tests. Second, in case of the verb ‘TAKE,’ ‘take a picture’ was the most common phrase in the textbooks and the Listening Tests. The expressions where the verb ‘TAKE’ followed by NP were presented 51 times in the textbooks(71.8%), while presented 53 times in the LGSWE and 18 times in the LDOCE respectively. Finally, ‘MAKE+NP’ expressions did not show a variety of expressions compared to the expressions with the other verbs. Most collocations here were used with the names of food. Only 10 expressions were used in the textbooks among 64 expressions(38 expressions in the LGSWE and 26 expressions in the LDOCE), taking up 26.3% of the textbook expressions. The findings indicated that the verb ‘MAKE’ did not show a wide range of expressions among the three target verbs. Hence, it is critical to include more collocations of high frequency delexical verbs such as ‘HAVE’, ‘TAKE’, and ‘MAKE’+NP in the textbooks and the Listening Tests. In addition, it is imperative to balance the use of such expressions between textbooks and listening tests in order to help students to improve their communicative competence.