Lexical collocations in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) coursebooks: A corpus-based analysis of the usefulness score and pedagogical value
Applied Corpus Linguistics, cilt.6, sa.1, 2026 (ESCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 6 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.acorp.2026.100194
- Dergi Adı: Applied Corpus Linguistics
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Collocations, Corpus, Formulaic language, Lexical collocations, Pedagogical value
- Maltepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Collocations constitute a central element of lexical competence and, consequently, represent a vital component of language education materials. Building upon Koprowski's (2005) framework, the present research employs a corpus-based approach to evaluate both the usefulness score and the pedagogical relevance of lexical collocations in three intermediate-level EFL coursebooks commonly utilized in Turkey. The usefulness score denotes the frequency of each collocation across eight registers of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) whereas pedagogical value refers to collocations with scores above 1.0 per million words, indicating a high instructional relevance. A total of 1,031 collocations were examined in terms of their structural categories, distributional frequencies, and register dispersion, alongside their pedagogical appropriateness. The analysis focuses on the number, type, and corpus-based usefulness scores of lexical collocations. In the selected coursebooks, New Headway contained 275 collocations identified, New English File contained 303, and Language Leader contained 453. Results show that New English File contains collocations with the highest overall pedagogical value, while Language Leader and New Headway include relatively lower-value collocations. The analysis also revealed substantial variation among the coursebooks regarding the diversity and pedagogical applicability of collocations. These findings underscore the necessity of integrating corpus-informed strategies into coursebook design. Combining complementary pedagogical measures within an expanding-circle context, this study proposes a replicable analytical framework for evaluating EFL coursebooks and demonstrates its adaptability to diverse instructional environments.