Örebro University
Department of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences English
How well do textbooks cover collocations?
An evaluation of Blueprint B 3.0
Author: Carl Wiström Degree Project Essay
Term 8 Supervisor: Dr. Hayo Reinders
Abstract
Collocations receive considerable interest in the second language acquisition literature, with a growing interest in the way they are covered in English as a foreign language (EFL)
textbooks. Despite this, corresponding studies in the Swedish context are sparse. The aim of this study was therefore to evaluate one of the most popular textbooks used in Swedish EFL classrooms, Blueprint B 3.0, by identifying how it covers collocations in terms of frequency and mode of presentation and how the collocational profile aligns with best practices as recommended in the existing literature. A total of 529 unique collocations were identified, of which 35 were targeted in exercises. The selection of collocations given explicit attention follows recommendations from the literature in terms of type, but not in terms of frequency, as less than half of the targeted multi-word units could not be identified as collocations with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013) and none with the list of first 100 collocations (Nation & Shin, 2007). As for mode of presentation, the identified exercises did not follow recommendations, and by design increased the risk of learner error. I discuss a number of pedagogical implications for teachers and textbook authors and offer some suggestions for future research in this area.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 4
1.1 Research Questions 5
2. Literature review 5
2.1 What are collocations? 6
2.2 The importance of collocations 6
2.3 Learning collocations 7
2.4 Teaching collocations 8
2.4.1 What kind of collocations? 8
2.4.2 Frequency of collocations 9 2.4.3 Introducing collocations 9 2.4.4 Best practices 10 2.5 Collocations in Textbooks 12 2.6 Situation in Sweden 13 3. Methodology 14 3.1 Material evaluation 15 3.2 Selection of textbook 16 3.3 Procedure 16 3.4 Implications 19 4. Findings 19 4.1 Identified Collocations 19
4.1.1 Collocations identified with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and
Thesaurus 19
4.1.2 Collocations identified with the list of 100 most common collocations in Spoken
English 20
4.1.3 Summary 20
4.2 Information and exercises on collocations 22
4.2.1 Information about collocations 22
4.2.2 Exercises introducing and offering practice in collocations 22
4.2.3 Exercises containing collocations 25
4.2.4 Summary 26
4.3 Checklist of criteria 26
5. Discussion 31
5.1 Blueprint B 3.0 31
5.2 Pedagogical Implications 36
5.3 Limitations of study 36
5.4 Future Research Implications 37
6. Conclusion 37
References 37
Appendix 1 43
1. Introduction
Researchers in the field of second language learning have been interested in collocations for decades, with recommendations for how they can best be taught dating back to the seventies (e.g. Brown, 1974). With a continuously growing interest, collocations have been researched extensively to date, ranging from studies trying to uncover the nature of developing
collocational knowledge (e.g. Choi, 2017; Toomer & Elgort, 2019) to attempts to discover effective methods for teaching collocations in L2 classrooms (e.g. Goudarzi & Moini, 2012; Hennebry, Rogers, Macaro & Murphy, 2017). This trend has its origin in the consensus that collocational knowledge is valuable to second language learners (Durrant & Schmitt, 2009; Howarth, 19981). Despite widespread and longstanding interest in establishing the most appropriate methods for teaching collocations in second language learning in other countries, there seems to be a lack of corresponding research on and in Swedish upper-secondary schools (Snoder, 2019).
The lack of attention directed to collocations could be traced back to the curriculum from the Swedish Ministry of Education, which does not explicitly mention collocations before its revision, which will take effect next year (Skolverket, 2011, 2019). Collocations are
mentioned under ‘reception’ in the core contents for English 6: “Hur variation och anpassning som skapas genom meningsbyggnad, ordbildning och val av ord, till exempel regionala varianter och kollokationer, i informella och formella sammanhang” (‘How variation and adaptation is created through sentence structure, creation and choice of words, for example regional variations and collocations, in informal and formal contexts’), (Skolverket Slutgitligt
förslag för kusplan engelska, 2019, p. 5)2. Since this content is categorized under reception, the Swedish ministry of education seems to consider collocations to be of most interest in relation to receptive vocabulary knowledge. Though, despite not being explicitly mentioned, collocations can be argued to be a crucial part of a core content under ‘production and interaction’ in English 6: “Språkliga företeelser, däribland uttal, vokabulär, grammatiska strukturer och meningsbyggnad, stavning, textbindning, inre och yttre struktur samt
anpassning, i elevernas egen produktion och interaktion” (‘Linguistic phenomena, including pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatical and sentence structure, spelling, cohesion, internal and external structure and adaptation, in students’ own production and interaction’)
1 But see Reynolds (2019) for an alternative view. 2 All translations from the national curriculum are mine.
(Skolverket Slutgitligt förslag för kusplan engelska, 2019, p.6). Therefore, it would be of great interest to also examine productive collocational knowledge.
The revision from the Swedish ministry of education will require teachers to consider the way collocations are taught in the English classroom in Swedish upper-secondary schools. In this process, textbooks can function as a guide for teachers. Textbooks have been described as “the backbone for English language education” (Işik, 2018, p.797). Therefore, it is important to examine whether the teaching approaches in textbooks match recommendations from current research, especially since collocations are a part of vocabulary that has been shown to be both important and difficult for second language learners to acquire. Research on learning English collocations for Swedish L1 users does exist (e.g. Gyllstad, 2007; Snoder, 2019), but few studies about collocations in textbooks for English education in Sweden have been conducted, with the exception of Hammarsten (2014). This suggests a gap in the body of research on collocations in the context of English education in Sweden, where an evaluation of the collocational profile in textbooks would offer beneficial contributions for developing effective materials for teachers to use in the classroom. Following trends for collocation exercises in English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks, as reported by Boers and Strong (2017), Swedish textbooks should heavily rely on exercises working with broken-up
collocations.
1.1 Research Questions
Consequently, this degree project essay aims to answer the following research questions: 1) How do Swedish EFL textbooks cover collocations in terms of a) frequency, and b) mode of presentation?
2) How does the collocational profile of Swedish EFL textbooks align with best practices as recommended by existing literature?
2. Literature review
In this section we define collocations and give a working definition for this research paper. We also present research on learning and teaching collocations, studies about collocations in textbooks and an overview of the situation in Sweden.
2.1 What are collocations?
Although collocations are commonly described as two or more words frequently co-occurring (Henriksen, 2013; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017), there are multiple ways of defining the
phenomenon of words collocating with each other. Yule (2010) suggests the following definition: ”a relationship between words that frequently occur together” (p. 284), which like the general description lacks the depth of clarification researchers in the field deem necessary. Nesselhauf (2005) offers us two views of the term collocation. One is the phraseological approach, viewing collocations as semi-fixed combinations of words. The other is a
frequency-based approach, which views collocations as closely co-occurring words, further distinguishing between high and low frequency. For this research paper however, Nation’s (2001) definition of collocations as “items frequently occurring together and with some degree of semantic unpredictability.” (2001, p.517) will be used. This decision is motivated by both the inclusive range this explanation gives, and the fact that it, like Nation (2001) mentions, creates a clear connection between collocational knowledge and native-like use of English.
2.2 The importance of collocations
Both Basal (2019) and Boers, Lindstromberg and Eyckmans (2014b) describe collocations as a growing area within research on second language learning. A reason for this could well be the consensus that collocations are important to learn for second language learners. Multiple researchers describe collocational knowledge as important for the development of language proficiency and fluency (Basal, 2019; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017; Rogers, 2018; Zaabalawi & Gould, 2017). Researchers also report collocations to be difficult for second language learners (Basal, 2019). Boers, Lindstromberg and Eyckmans (2014b) describe how second language learners’ acquisition of collocational knowledge is slow, a claim supported by the findings of Teng’s (2018) study, showing collocations to be the most difficult part of vocabulary for learners to acquire. In contrast, Pellicer-Sanchéz’s (2017) research found that collocations are learned at a similar rate as other aspects of vocabulary, though the study only examined incidental learning of collocations. Another aspect of difficulty in relation to collocations is usage. Laufer and Waldman (2011) examined the usage of verb-noun collocations of second language learners at three proficiency levels. The results indicated that only the number of collocations in production increased at higher proficiency, but that the rate of correct usage of collocations stayed the same, showing that even advanced learners of English as a second language have problems with accurate production of collocations.
2.3 Learning collocations
There are multiple studies of incidental learning of collocations, where results seem to be split. On the one hand, studies like Farshi, Tavakoli and Ketabi’s (2019), examining how different types of input affect incidental learning and retention of collocations in second language classrooms, show that collocations can be learned incidentally. In accordance with this, a study regarding incidental learning of collocations from reading, conducted by Pellicer-Sánchez (2017), shows that collocational knowledge is learned at the same rate as other lexical components. On the other hand, there is a range of opposing studies claiming that the incidental acquisition of collocational knowledge, for example through reading, is limited. For example, Boers and Lindstromberg (2009) examined the frequency of collocations consisting of strong verbs and nouns in a thriller novel and concluded that the word-pairs occurred more than once only to a very little extent, leading to suboptimal conditions for readers to recognize word-pairs as solid collocations. In addition to this, other studies also found that reading had a relatively low effect on acquiring collocations (Teng, 2018). In line with these findings, Boers, Lindstromberg and Eyckmans (2014b) explore obstacles for incidental acquisition of collocations, where attention is posed both as critical for memory retention and as
insufficiently supported in incidental acquisition. From their study aiming to investigate the retention of collocations, Boers, Lindstromberg and Eyckmans (2014b) ultimately drew conclusions supporting the justification for explicit approaches for teaching collocations. Agreeing with the substantial limitations of incidental acquisition of collocations, findings from Zaferanieh and Behrooznia’s (2011) study show a significant performance improvement from explicit collocation instruction in comparison with implicit instruction. Therefore, even though there are studies asserting positive results for incidental acquisition of collocations, a majority of studies advocate explicit approaches to teaching.
For learning vocabulary in general, including collocations, Nation (2001) explains three psychological conditions: noticing, retrieving, and generating. Noticing is described as a process where learners' attention is directed to an item and should contribute to awareness of the item’s usefulness. Nation (2001) also emphasizes decontextualization in relation to noticing, where the deliberate focus is not given to the whole message of language, but to individual language items, for example when the teacher provides a definition or translation of a word. For the reinforcement of noticed language items in our memory, Nation (2001) also suggests that retrieval is necessary. This process occurs either in input, where readers meet the
form of a word and need to retrieve the meaning, or in output, when readers have the meaning of a word and need to retrieve the form. The last presented condition for learning is generative use, which in reception happens when learners meet the same word in different usage and context and in production when learners use words in different contexts.
2.4 Teaching collocations
For teaching collocations, a distinction must be made between exercises ‘containing’, ‘introducing’ and ‘offering practice’ on collocations. Exercises containing collocations
without mentioning them belong to implicit learning, while exercises introducing and offering practice on collocations belong to explicit learning.
2.4.1 What kind of collocations?
While researchers agree on the notion that collocations are an important aspect of second language learning, they distinguish between different kinds of collocations in their studies, trying to expand the knowledge base of the most valuable types of collocations for the
practice of second language learning. Based on the findings from three studies constituting his thesis, Snoder (2019) presents three types of collocation as especially important for second language learning: verb-noun, adjective-noun and adverb-adjective collocations. Snoder (2019) supports this by highlighting a directed focus on the three types of collocations in studies conducted by both L2 vocabulary researchers and applied linguists. To determine the order of introducing different types of collocations, Nizonkiza and van de Poel (2014) conducted a study examining the difficulty of adjective-noun and verb-noun collocation, as well as the size of collocations across levels of proficiency in EFL learners. The collocations were selected from different word bands, according to Nation’s (2006) chronological list of words for vocabulary acquisition structured in 1000-intervals. The results revealed that adjective-noun collocations were more difficult than verb-noun collocations, although neither B2 nor C1 level learners had any serious problems with either type of collocation within the 2000-word band. Nizkonzia and van de Poel (2014) therefore drew the conclusion that the type, restricted to adjective-noun and verb-noun collocations, does not matter when selecting the order of which collocations should be taught. They did, however, recommend going beyond the 2000-word band for the upper-intermediate level (B2).
Another resource for selecting collocations is the list of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007), based on words with the highest frequency in the
spoken section of the British National Corpus. The criteria for inclusion were both based on frequency and collocation types to promote useful items on the list. Since the source of items was spoken language, the list is described to contain a range from formal to informal speech, with some collocations being characteristic for British English.
2.4.2 Frequency of collocations
In addition to type of collocation, the number of times learners are exposed to the same collocation is of interest to researchers. Some researchers, like Lee (2008), state that the average exposure in terms of number of collocations and the intervals between occurrences needed for effective acquisition of collocations are difficult to determine. Since then, multiple researchers have examined this further. Peters (2014) conducted a study comparing the recall of single words and collocations after one, three and five occurrences for learners. From the results it was concluded that the group which encountered the collocations five times had a major increase in recalling collocations compared to the group only encountering collocations once. The importance of the number of encounters for collocation learning was also explored by Webb, Newton and Chang (2013). In the study, learners were divided into four groups and were exposed to collocations in reading and listening, with 1, 5, 10 and 15 encounters,
respectively. Results showed that increasing the number of encounters had a significant effect on learning collocations, especially for the group with 15 encounters.
2.4.3 Introducing collocations
One of the recommendations for explicit teaching is to raise awareness of collocations in different ways. Fan (2009) suggests that L2 learners should be made aware of their own collocational use through raising awareness of differences in collocational use between their L1 and L2, leading to both more sensitivity in noticing collocations in reception and being ready to include collocations in production. To promote noticing by input enhancement has been recommended by numerous previous studies. For example, highlighting (Tsai, 2014) and recycling collocations (Lee, 2008; Tsai, 2014). Fazlali and Shanini (2019) conducted research on the effect of consciousness-raising and input enhancement on increasing collocation knowledge. Both methods included drawing attention to collocations by bolding them and providing explanations of unknown collocations, including meaning, synonyms and L1 translations. In the consciousness-raising group, students worked with tasks explicitly in relation to collocations, for example writing summaries of texts only using collocations. In the
input enhancement group, students worked with tasks implicitly in relation to collocations, for example answering reading comprehension where questions or answers included collocations. Results from the study showed that enhanced input had a significant effect on lexical, but not grammatical collocations. For the consciousness-raising instruction, however, a significant increase for all collocations was found. Recommendations therefore included that teachers design tasks where students notice features of collocations, especially how words form collocations.
Further along the line of introducing collocations with information about them, Snoder (2019) advocates introducing terminology of collocations to enable metalinguistic awareness,
especially for advanced learners. Although recognizing the complexity of terminology in research, Snoder (2019) deems terms like “node” and “collocate” as necessary for both
teachers and learners to select, identify, and discuss collocations. Therefore, these terms are to be considered of high value to be introduced and used in teaching of collocations.
Introducing collocations as intact units, or chunks, has been associated with benefits for second language learners. Boers, Demecheeler, Coxhead and Webb (2014) conducted a study comparing different exercises for teaching verb-noun collocations. In this study, one of the aspects compared in different exercises was whether the collocations presented to learners were intact or broken-up. Conclusions support presenting collocations as intact units, which resulted in less error than exercises requiring learners to reunite collocations. In a study examining the relationship between the noticing of collocational structures in reading and the usage of them, Zabalaawi and Gould’s (2017) findings support working with collocations as chunks and not separate words co-occurring. In a study of EFL textbooks, Tsai (2014) concluded that collocations also are to be introduced in their natural context, where learners can see the normal usage of the collocations.
2.4.4 Best practices
Boers and Strong (2017) present an overview of research on exercises in EFL textbooks that aim to develop learners’ productive collocational skills. The authors report an increase in research on collocations in the last 20 years, explained partially by the progress within corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics, leading to discoveries of multi-word items’ natural
occurrence in language and impact on fluency. Furthermore, the importance and difficulty for foreign language learners to acquire collocational knowledge is presented as a justification for
designing pedagogic materials with an explicit directed attention towards collocations. On the other hand, the authors describe the results of studies examining the effect on retention of collocations based on learner’s directed attention as non-conclusive. Advocating the addition of cognitive elements to the learning process of collocation, the authors stand positive to the trend of textbooks including exercises in addition to promoting noticing in-text. Furthermore, it is explained that the popular exercises in textbooks which require learners to determine which set of multi-word items are correct and incorrect are based on the belief that learners will retain the right combinations of words while forgetting the wrong ones. The authors refrain from asserting the selection of collocations but offer the recommendation that
collocations to target should be chosen with difficulty and usefulness of given expressions in mind. The range of advice based on research for collocation exercises in textbooks is
described as sparse, but the authors set out to review the studies available.
With a starting point in research of errorless learning in general (e.g Baddeley & Wilson, 1994; Warmington & Hitch, 2014) and specifically learning collocations (Boers,
Demecheeler, Coxhead and Webb, 2014; Boers, Deconick & Stengers, 2015), Boers and Strong (2017) develop the claim that minimizing errors in textbook collocation exercises is of utmost importance. Testing how effective different ‘reunite broken-up collocation’ exercises are, Boers, Demecheeler, Coxhead and Webb (2014) found that learners’ mistakes in
exercises lead to faulty use of collocations later as well. From this perspective, Boers and Strong (2017) present aspects and types of exercises that can cause errors for learners, including reuniting broken-up collocations (Boers, Demecheeler, Coxhead and Webb, 2014) and presenting semantically similar items (Webb & Kagimoto, 2011). The authors indicate themselves that exercises as ‘find the odd one out’ and ‘find the mistake’ also may be inclined to cause error. The results from the presented study by Boers et al. (2015) reveal a positive effect for presenting model use of expressions to students before they initiate exercises, though Boers and Strong (2017) are not convinced that the gain was enough on its own. To explain this, the authors present several sources (Kang, 2010; Stengers, Deconinck, Boers, & Eyckmans, 2016; Schmitt, 2008) which indicate that simply providing right answers to copy can discourage engagement from students. Therefore, the authors advocate exercises that minimize the risk of error and at the same time promote engagement. Boers and Strong (2017) present recommendations on how to achieve this, for example by encouraging learners to look up information of collocations themselves in collocation dictionaries (Komuro, 2009) or corpus-based resources (Chen, 2011; Gao, 2011). On the same note, the authors make their
own recommendation of having learners explore targeted collocations in context before initiating exercises.
Furthermore, it is recommended to work with intact collocations, as the results from Boers, Demecheeler, Coxhead and Webb’s (2014) study indicated that exercises with intact
collocations resulted in less errors than exercises with broken-up collocations. To make words memorable the authors recommend, though yet to be tested in research, to give hints in ‘fill the gaps’ exercises by providing the first letter of the missing word. Other ways presented to promote vocabulary, specifically expressions being remembered by learners, is to draw attention to alliteration, rhyme and near-rhyme in collocations, as proven beneficial by Boers, Lindstromberg and Eyckmans (2014a; 2014c). Boers and Strong (2017) concludes that learning new collocations by the means of textbook exercises can be difficult and that these exercises should serve to reinforce knowledge of already introduced collocations.
2.5 Collocations in Textbooks
A few studies have examined the learning and teaching of collocations, specifically in
textbooks. Wang and Good (2007) investigated the repetition of collocations in textbooks for EFL learners and found that 80% of verb-noun collocations identified in three textbooks, were only repeated between one and five times. Conclusions from the results included that
approximately five to six verb-noun collocations would be taught per lesson when following the three textbooks. Similarly, Tsai (2014) conducted a study to explore profiles of EFL textbooks for verb-noun collocations. For frequency, the results showed that collocations occurred 21.21, 22.24 and 27.52 times per 1000 words in the three examined textbooks. For diversity, the collocations were compared to an exhaustive list of verified collocations types, resulting in a coverage of 7.07%, 6.24%, and 7.2% for the three textbooks. Accounting for text length, the number of collocation types per 1000 words was also calculated: 10.37, 10.72 and 11.44 respectively for each textbook. The third aspect examined was the recycling of collocations. Here the results revealed that 90% of the collocations across all textbooks were repeated fewer than five times, and that circa 60% was not repeated at all. In comparison, the profile of identified collocations in the textbooks was also found to correspond to the written production of native speakers.
Nation (2007) describes a framework for categorizing learning opportunities in language courses. The framework consists of four strands, in which all language learning exercises can
be classified. The strands are described through their learning conditions for their individual focus, expressed as pedagogical principles. Three of the strands are meaning-focused, working with language mostly familiar to the learners, in large quantities and with attention directed to comprehending or communicating meaning. The meaning-focused input is restricted to reading and listening, and the meaning-focused output is restricted to speaking and writing. The third meaning-focus strand is fluency development, which includes all four language skills and works with language completely familiar to learners. The fourth strand is language-focused learning, which, as Nation (2007) describes, can have many names such as focus on form and intentional learning, and focus on deliberate attention to language features. The prerequisites for this strand include that learners’ attention is deliberately directed to specific language features with deep reflection, and that the features are given repeated attention while not being dependent on knowledge which learners do not have.
Further distinguishing between different exercises, Nation (2001) introduces the terms ‘receptive’ and ‘productive’ vocabulary knowledge. In terms of collocations, Nation (2001) explains receptive knowledge as recognizing appropriate collocations and productive as producing words with appropriate collocations. Studies comparing receptive and productive learning relation to collocational knowledge are sparse, though, Webb and Kagimoto (2009) examine the effects of receptive and productive learning collocations. The findings of this study indicate that productive learning is overall more beneficial than receptive for more advanced learners, if one type of learning must be preferred.
2.6 Situation in Sweden
Wolter and Gyllstad (2013) conducted a study to compare the collocational processing for non-native speakers with Swedish as L1 and native speakers. Participants with Swedish as L1 were determined to have high proficiency in English, with a vocabulary comparable to the higher levels of the CEFR framework. An acceptability judgement task was carried out, where participants were measured for time and accuracy in deciding whether a two-word item was commonly used in English or not. The results indicated that there were considerable
frequency effects for non-native speakers’ collocational processing, for both congruent and incongruent collocations. Furthermore, a positive influence from the L1 was found in processing congruent collocations compared to incongruent. It was concluded that both frequency and L1 have an effect on collocational processing for non-native speakers with Swedish as L1, specifically for speakers with high proficiency in English.
While the aim of Wolter and Gyllstad’s (2013) study was to investigate how non-native English speakers with Swedish as L1 process collocations, Snoder (2019) studies how vocabulary and collocations are taught in the English classroom of Swedish schools. He reports that wordlists with a focus on single words dominate the explicit vocabulary teaching in Sweden. Further on this aspect, the results from one part of Snoder’s (2019) study showed that the model of decontextualized lists of collocations with consecutive tests was effective for deliberate learning. Another indication was that lexical collocations should be given extra focus out of all formulaic language types since they are important for communicating
meaning as well as heavily used by native speakers.
An earlier study of collocations in the English subject in Sweden was conducted by
Hammarsten (2014), with the aim to explore teachers’ awareness of, and attitudes towards, collocations and the support given by materials such as textbooks. To examine this, a survey and a textbook analysis was conducted, as well as interviews carried out with four teachers, three of them operating in the upper-secondary school. The survey gave insight into teachers’ view of incorrect use of collocations among their students, and showed that teachers rated collocational mistakes low on a scale of written mistakes, being less important than, for example, mistakes like “does/doesn’t” and “false friends”. Answers from interviews, along with findings from the textual analysis of two textbooks used by the teachers, resulted in a description of teachers’ knowledge of collocations, teachers’ attitudes toward the support their textbooks offered on collocations and the extent to which textbooks provided information and exercises on collocations. In the interviews, teachers expressed that they did not have lesson plans for collocations, nor did they think that teaching collocations was important for lower-achieving students. The interviews also revealed that teachers did not have a clear definition of collocations, and that it was often confused with idiomatic expressions. The textbook analysis showed that only one of two textbooks, Blueprint B 2.0, contained collocation exercises and that it only accounted for four out of sixty exercises present. All the four exercises prompted students to find a word that often occurs with another word, without any explanation of what a collocation is.
3. Methodology
As described in the introduction and literature review, research on collocations in the context of English education in Swedish upper-secondary school is limited, with research on
collocations specifically in textbooks being even more so. Since collocations are shown to be of great importance in second language learning, along with the new explicit directives from the Swedish Ministry of Education on teaching collocations, this study aims to fill an
important gap in current research by examining how textbooks’ inclusion of collocations aligns with recommendations from recent research.
3.1 Material evaluation
There are multiple ways of evaluating educational material and to choose between one or another is primarily based on the purpose of the evaluation. One recommended option in materials evaluation is to determine criteria, presented in checklists. These works consist of questions and statements used for evaluating textbooks, which should be based on underlying principles of language teaching and acquisition (Tomlinson, 2012). Since the aim of this study is to evaluate how the chosen textbook selects, provides information of, introduces, and offers practice in collocations in comparison to recommendations from research, the checklist would have to be based on said research. This means that general checklists (e.g. Işik, 2018) would not suffice to answer the research questions. As Boers and Strong (2017) report, the range of research for exercises on collocations in textbooks is limited, making the accessible checklists for evaluation of collocation exercises even slimmer. Therefore, recommendations for best practices of teaching collocations will be the foundation for creating a pre-use evaluation list of criteria, in agreement with Tomlinson’s (2013) guidelines for creating and evaluating criteria in materials development.
The best practices from Boers and Strong (2017) will be used as the base for
recommendations, since 1) it is a recent publication by renowned authors, and 2) it reviews the research available on collocation exercises in textbooks. However, since it is not an exhaustive overview of research on collocations, specifically lacking in discussing the selection of collocations, other sources will be used to complement the best practices. Recommendations for the recycling of collocations are provided by Peters (2014) and Webb et al. (2013). In selection, recommendations are provided by Nizonkiza and van de Poel (2014), Snoder (2019), Nation and Shin (2007) and Nation (2006). For categorizing exercises, Nation’s (2007) framework of the four strands, and terminology of receptive and productive knowledge (Nation, 2001) will be used.
3.2 Selection of textbook
The initial selection of textbooks was made by performing a google search for “läromedel engelska 6 gymnasiet” to get an overview of all possible candidates. From the top 15 hits, publishers and available textbooks for English 6 were identified. To determine which textbooks would be most suitable for the evaluation, first we considered “Is it representative of the genre?” to ensure that the selected materials could represent the full range of textbooks available in the country. Therefore, the selected textbook is specifically developed for the curriculum in Swedish upper-secondary schools. Next, we considered for each possible candidate for inclusion “Is it a popular textbook?”. This question is more difficult to answer since like others have reported (Demir, 2010), no records are being kept of which textbooks are used in Swedish schools. Furthermore, the publishers of textbooks do not share their statistics of bestselling books, which makes it difficult to obtain information on which textbooks are most popular. As an alternative, a small e-mail survey was conducted. The question of which textbook is used, was sent to 45 active English teachers in the upper-secondary school. Based on the answers from teachers and reasoning around these two big questions, the following textbook has been chosen for the evaluation: Blueprint B Version 3.0 (Lundfall & Nyström, 2018).
One point needs to be discussed regarding the chosen textbook, which is that a previous analysis of a ‘Blueprint’ textbook has been done by Hammarsten (2014). However, this analysis was 1) conducted on an earlier edition of the ‘Blueprint’ textbook for English 6, and 2) focusing on the information about collocations provided in the textbook. Therefore, this study will contribute with a deeper and broader perspective beyond information of
collocations, including an evaluation of the selection of collocations, as well as introduction and teaching of collocations. By evaluating a newer edition of the same textbook, this study will also be able to provide an insight into the development from the textbook's authors by comparing the identified collocation exercises.
3.3 Procedure
The type of evaluation is ‘pre-use evaluation’ since it predicts the possibilities and limitations of the material, without observing learners use it. To make a pre-use evaluation less
subjective, Tomlinson (2013) suggests using principled criteria. Tomlinson’s (2013) instructions on materials evaluation were used to create the checklist, phrasing evaluation
questions based on the best practice paper of Boers and Strong (2017), with possible answers on a scale from 1-5. Analysis questions were constructed to determine what the textbook contained and not, with yes and no as the only possible answers, building a foundation for answering the evaluation questions. Below is the step-by-step procedure of this study, structured by the research questions.
How do Swedish EFL textbooks cover collocations in terms of frequency?
1. Identify collocations in the textbook with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013).
2. Identify collocations in the textbook with the list of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007).
3. Cross-reference words in targeted collocations in 10.000-word bands for learning vocabulary (Nation, 2006).3
How do Swedish EFL textbooks cover collocations in terms of mode of presentation? 4. Identify information about collocations in the textbook.
5. Identify exercises containing collocations in the textbook.
6. Identify exercises which explicitly introduce and offer practice in collocations. How does the collocational profile of Swedish EFL textbooks align with best practices as recommended by existing literature?
7. Apply the checklist of criteria to the findings from the previous steps.
Table 1
The compiled checklist of criteria Evaluation questions Analysis questions To what extent does the textbook provide explicit attention to useful collocations? Are targeted collocations of the type “verb-noun”? Are targeted collocations of the type “adjective-noun”? Are targeted collocations of the type “adverb-adjective”? Do the collocations include words beyond the 2000-word band? Are targeted collocations found in the list for 100 most common collocations?
To what extent does the textbook provide information about collocations? Does the textbook make learners aware of L1-L2 differences? Does the textbook introduce terminology of collocations? Does the textbook provide etymological elaboration of collocations? To what extent does the textbook introduce collocations to effectively facilitate learning? Do collocation exercises point out the presence of alliteration in collocations? Do collocation exercises point out the presence of rhyme in collocations? Do collocation exercises point out the presence of near-rhyme in collocations? Are collocations presented in their contextualized use before targeted in exercises? Do targeted collocation recur 5 or more times? To what extent is the textbook likely to provide collocation exercises that ensure sufficient engagement? Do collocation exercises urge learners to look for the required information themselves in collocation dictionaries? Do collocation exercises urge learners to look for the required information themselves in corpus-based resources? To what extent are the collocation exercises in the textbook likely to minimize the risk of error? Do collocation exercises give learners access to model input to mime for the correct answers? Are learners given hints in the exercise items? Do collocation exercises work with intact collocations? To what extent is the collocation exercises in the textbook likely to increase the risk of error? Do collocation exercises require learners to reunite broken-up pairs? Do collocation exercises ask learners to find the odd one out? Do collocation exercises target multiple new collocations in one go? Do collocation exercises generate errors? Do collocation exercises rely on corrective feedback? Do exercises contain collocations with semantically similar words?
3.4 Implications
The findings from this study will help teachers, and potentially textbooks authors to get an overview of the possibilities and limitations of textbooks in the present market regarding teaching collocations. In depth, this study will provide an insight into the collocational profile of Blueprint B 3.0 in terms of selection, information, introduction, and practice on
collocations in relation to best practice recommendations. This will help teachers to consider the usage of the textbook in question and the authors for potential material development areas. 4. Findings
This section presents findings from the textbook Blueprint B 3.0 (Lundfall & Nyström, 2018). The first section presents identified collocations in the text, vocabulary lists and exercises, with the help of 1) the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013) and 2) the List of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007). The next section presents 1) information in the textbook about collocations, and 2) exercises that either a) contain, or b) introduce and explicitly offer practice with collocations. The last section
includes a comparison with best practices as recommended by research, where the checklist of criteria will be applied to the findings from the previous sections.
4.1 Identified Collocations
The aim of this section is to provide an answer to part one of the first research question: How do Swedish EFL textbooks cover collocations in terms of frequency? To assert this question, collocations are identified with the help of the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013) and the list of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007). The appendixes show which collocations are identified, what type of collocation they are, the number of occurrences and the page numbers where they occur in the textbook. In respective tables, it is shown whether the collocation appears in exercises, and if the collocations are targeted in the exercises. Words included in the list of the first 10.000 words (Nation, 2006) are also presented for targeted collocations.
4.1.1 Collocations identified with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus Table 2
Summarized selected data of Appendix 1
Collocations Appear in
exercises
Targeted in exercises
449 132 35 For complete data, see Appendix 1.
4.1.2 Collocations identified with the List of 100 most common collocations in Spoken English
Table 3
Summarized selected data of Appendix 2
Collocations Appear in
exercises
Targeted in exercise
80 42 0
For complete data, see Appendix 2. 4.1.3 Summary
Identified collocations with the help of the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013), as presented in Table 2, and the collocations appearing in the list of 100 most
common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007), as presented in Table 3, together present a number of 529 unique collocations. These collocations make up a total of 1366 occurrences throughout the textbook. 80 unique collocations are present in Nation and Shin’s (2007) list, constituting 15,1% of the total number of different collocations in the textbook. The 80 unique collocations presented also reveals that 80% of the list of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (2007) is covered in the textbook. 42 of these collocations do appear in exercises, though none are explicit targets for teaching. Among all collocations, the top three types are: adjective + noun, with 184 entries (34,8%), verb + noun with 132 entries (24,9%), and noun + noun with 50 entries (9,4%).
Chart 1
In Chart 1, we can see the proportion of collocations present in the textbooks which appear in the context of exercises and to what extent those collocations are the explicit target of the exercise. Notable is that only three targeted collocations (“presidential-election”, “attend-a meeting” and “retain-control”) occurred more than once, meaning that it could be found outside of the collocation exercise. Of the 35 unique collocations targeted in exercises, 23 are of the type verb + noun, 11 are of the type adjective + noun and one is of the type noun + verb. Three quarters of the words present in the targeted collocations are found in the first three thousand bands in the list of 10.000 first words (Nation, 2006), as seen in Table 3 below.
Table 3
Overview of words from targeted collocations in the frequency-bands
Word band 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000 Not
present Number of
words
12 18 25 2 1 12
One last important note to reflect upon is the fact that out of 91 targeted multi-word items in exercises labeled as “collocations exercises”, just 35 could be identified with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013) and none with the list of 100 most common
collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007). The 56 multi-word items that could not be confirmed will therefore not be included and treated as collocations.
4.2 Information and exercises on collocations
The aim of this section is to provide an answer to part b of the first research question: How do Swedish EFL textbooks cover collocations in terms of mode of presentation?
4.2.1 Information about collocations
This part contains all information about collocations present in the textbook. This includes any meta-information, such as definitions of relating terms and explanations for how collocations should be treated or used. In the textbook this information is communicated in two main ways. One is through the introductions and headings for the exercises explicitly treating collocations. Here information is provided in the form of mentioning different types of collocations and usage of the term collocate. The other part of the textbook which
communicates information about collocations is found in the preface:
I Blueprint B Version 3.0 tillämpar vi ett tydligare lexikaliskt synsätt. Både i ordövningar och i de nya gloslistorna övas collocations, det vill säga ordpar eller grupper av ord som normalt förekommer tillsammans och bör läras in som språkliga enheter eller hela fraser. Det är också viktigt att ta till sig de sammanhang som orden förekommer i för att kunna första exakta betydelser och senare kunna använda orden korrekt i produktion. (‘In Blueprint B Version 3.0, we are applying a more coherent lexical approach. Both in word work and in the new vocabulary lists include practice of collocations, i.e. word-pairs or groups of words which normally occur together and should be taught as linguistic units or complete phrases. It is also important to explore the context in which the words occur to understand the precise meaning and to later be able to use the words correctly in production’) (p. 3)
4.2.2 Exercises introducing and offering practice in collocations
This part presents exercises that explicitly introduce and offer practice in collocations. These exercises are presented in the “word work” section across five chapters of the textbook. In each of these chapters, collocation exercises are connected to each other and presented as “Part 1”, “Part 2” and “Follow Up” under the same headings. Therefore, the exercises under respective heading will be presented and summarized as a continuous series of exercises.
“Collocations with verbs and nouns” page 48 Description:
This series of exercises belongs to the strand of language-focused learning, focuses on
promoting productive knowledge, and includes one “reunite broken phrases” exercise and one “translation” exercise. The first exercise requires learners to match verbs with suitable
additions to construct full sentences and reunite verb-noun collocations. Explicit attention is given to the language feature “collocation”, with the type verb-noun specified. Learners have to weigh their options and conclude which addition includes a noun that agrees with the given verb and make up a collocation. The exercise requires learners to translate sentences from Swedish (their L1) to English using the verbs and nouns from part one. By working with the same vocabulary, the whole series of exercises provides repeated attention to verb-noun collocations. Some of the sentences in the translation exercise, though, do not include the same verb-noun collocations as in the first exercise. For example, the collocation “descend + slope” is reversed in the translation exercise, presenting a new, similar collocation: “ascend + slope”. This shift requires learners to process the collocation and reflect upon the meaning and how the verb and noun work together.
“Collocations with verbs” page 106 Description:
This series of exercises belongs to the strand of language-focused learning, focuses on promoting productive knowledge, and includes one “reunite broken phrases” exercise, one “fill the gaps” exercise and one “oral output” exercise. The first exercise requires learners to match verbs with suitable additions or nouns to form collocations. The distinction between additions and nouns, along with the title of the exercise-series, would indicate that the targeted collocations include verbs and either nouns or words of unspecified word class. All collocations in the first exercise though, are of the type verb-noun. There are more additions and nouns presented than verbs, leaving some of the right column items without a match. The second exercise requires learners to use the verbs listed in the first one to fill gaps in
otherwise complete sentences. The verb gets a new noun to collocate in all sentences. The “follow up” exercise work with oral output. Learners are prompted to communicate the sentences from the second part of the exercise to classmates without looking at the verbs they selected as appropriate. Throughout the exercise there is a directed, repeated attention to the listed verbs and how they collocate with, mostly, different nouns.
Description:
This series of exercises is of the strand language-focused learning, focuses on promoting productive knowledge, and includes one “fill the gaps” exercise and one “written output” exercise. Both exercises have a deliberate focus on the language feature collocation, giving specific attention to adjective-noun collocations. In the first exercise, learners are prompted to fill gaps in sentences with suitable groups of adjectives. The available options consist of three adjectives, all collocating with the same noun. The nouns are highlighted with italics in the sentences, taking place right after the gap. Learners are instructed to check that they understand all adjectives before starting to fill the gaps, giving room to use a dictionary or corpus, though without specifying possible aids. The second exercise requires learners to write eight new sentences, using the italicized nouns and one of the adjectives commonly used with respective nouns. The sentences should then be shared with classmates.
“Collocations” page 206-207 Description:
This series of exercises belongs to the strand of language-focused learning, focuses on
promoting productive knowledge, and includes one “reunite broken phrases” exercise and one “fill the gaps” exercise. Both exercises work with verb-noun collocations, which is stated in the instruction for the first exercise. Here learners are given a scrambled list of verbs and nouns to reunite into collocations. The term collocate is used to describe the relationship between the verbs and nouns that fit together. The second exercise builds on the first and requires learners to fill the gap in sentences with words from the first exercise, changing the form where necessary. Furthermore, since all of the recurring words are verbs, attention is given to verb-noun collocations throughout the series of exercises.
“Collocations with verbs” page 226-227 Description:
This series of exercises belongs to the strand of language-focused learning, focuses on promoting productive knowledge, and includes one “reunite broken phrases” exercise, one “fill the gaps” exercise and one “oral output” exercise”. The instructions from the first exercise ask learners to combine verbs with nouns or additions from a list. Since there are fewer verbs than additions, learners have to choose the most suitable ones to match the verbs. The answer key provides one correct phrase for each verb but indicates that there are more possible solutions. In the second exercise, learners should fill in the gaps of sentences with verbs from the previous exercise, changing the form where necessary. In these sentences, the
verbs are given new collocates, though still constructing verb-noun collocations. The third exercise requires learners to read the completed sentences to a classmate without the aid of the verb list and sentences. Throughout this series of exercises, attention is given to verb
collocations, specifically of the type verb-noun, providing recurring opportunities for learners to work with the targeted language feature in different contexts.
4.2.3 Exercises containing collocations
This part presents exercises containing collocations without mentioning them, as presented in Table 3.
Table 3
Type, frequency and page numbers of exercises containing collocations
Type of exercise Number of exercises Page numbers
Fill the gaps 14 37, 73, 106, 107, 108, 120,
144, 161, 168, 188, 197, 206, 226, 248 Group discussion 9 63, 72, 79, 109, 124, 143, 153, 167, 179 Listening comprehension 8 67, 130, 146, 179, 212, 229, 241, 243 Reading comprehension 7 72, 79, 124, 187, 222, 225, 247 Written output 7 54, 65, 134, 168, 173, 216, 252 Oral output 7 53, 107, 132, 171, 214, 227, 250 Synonyms 4 22, 47, 135, 153
Reunite broken phrases 4 48, 106, 206, 226
Match words with definitions
3 37-38, 64, 189
Translate 2 48, 73
Table 3 includes a total of 65 exercises containing collocations, across ten types of exercises. The exercises containing collocations also range across all four language skills. ‘Fill the gaps’ exercises have most occurrences of collocations with a coverage of 14 separate exercises, followed by ‘group discussion’ with nine exercises. However, this table only shows the number of exercises in which collocations occur, not how many instances of the same collocation, or different collocations, that each type of exercise covers.
4.2.4 Summary
As previously described, information on collocations is provided in two main ways by the textbook. One is through the exercises themselves, where titles such as “Collocations with verbs and nouns” (page 48) and instructions such as “Combine the verbs with the nouns that they would normally collocate with” (page 206) give learners hints of what type of
collocations exists and the relationship between words in multi-word units. Definitions of terminology or a list of collocation types, however, are not provided. The other medium of information is found in the preface. Here the authors explain their intentions and approaches to the textbook’s arrangement, including the teaching of collocations. The present “coherent lexical approach” (page 3) is described, explaining how collocations are a part of the
vocabulary lists and word work exercises. The importance of teaching multi-word units as complete phrases is expressed, along with the notion that learners be given the opportunity to explore the context of words to use them correctly in production.
In total, there are 65 exercises which contain collocations and out of these there are twelve exercises in the textbook that explicitly treat collocations. These exercises occur in series throughout the chapters, where the exercises under the same heading treat the same specific language feature. Since collocations are an explicitly targeted language feature throughout the exercises, the language-focused strand is heavily represented. Consistency can be found in the series of exercises, where the same type of exercise often is targeted throughout the exercises. This is shown for example in the exercises under the heading “Collocations” (page 206-207), where the verbs used in the first exercise to reunite broken phrases are also used to fill the gaps in the second exercise, giving the verbs new collocates. This coherence in attention given to specific types of collocations, often with the same headword, extends to the written and oral output exercises. These often occur last in the series of exercises and require learners to produce or communicate sentences with already familiar collocations from previous
exercises.
4.3 Checklist of criteria
The aim of this section is to provide an answer to the second research question: How does the collocational profile of Swedish EFL textbooks align with best practices as recommended by existing literature? Applying the criteria of the checklist to the findings from previous sections establish the foundation for answering the question of whether the textbooks collocation
profile aligns with best practices. The analysis questions are answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and supply information needed to answer the corresponding evaluation question.
To what extent does the textbook provide explicit attention to useful collocations? 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
yes / no if “yes”, how many?
Are targeted collocations of the
type “verb-noun”? yes 22
Are targeted collocations of the type “adjective-noun”? yes 11 Are targeted collocations of the type “adverb-adjective”? no - Do the collocations include words beyond the 2000-word band? yes 28 (words) Are targeted collocations found in the list for 100 most common
collocations?
no -
To what extent does the textbook provide information about collocations? 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
yes / no If “yes”, how?
- Does the textbook make learners aware of L1-L2
differences? no -
- Does the textbook introduce
terminology of
collocations? yes
The term “collocate” is mentioned in one exercise - Does the textbook
provide etymological elaboration of
collocations?
To what extent does the textbook introduce collocations to effectively facilitate learning? 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
yes / no If “yes”, how often?
Do collocation exercises point out the presence of alliteration in collocations?
no -
Do collocation exercises point out the presence of rhyme in collocations?
no -
Do collocation exercises point out the presence of near-rhyme in collocations? no - Are collocations presented in their contextualized use before targeted in exercises? yes once Do targeted collocation recur 5 or more times? no -
To what extent is the textbook likely to provide collocation exercises that ensure sufficient engagement?
1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
yes / no If “yes”, how?
Do collocation exercises urge learners to look for the required information themselves in collocation dictionaries? no - Do collocation exercises urge no -
learners to look for the required information themselves in corpus-based resources?
To what extent are the collocation exercises in the textbook likely to minimize the risk of error?
1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
Do’s yes / no If “yes”, how?
Do collocation exercises give learners access to model input to mime for the correct answers?
no -
Are learners given hints in the exercise
items? yes
By italicizing the collocates in one “fill the gaps”
exercise Do collocation
exercises work with
intact collocations? no -
To what extent is the collocation exercises in the textbook likely to increase the risk of error? 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
Don’ts yes / no If “yes”, how?
Do collocation exercises require learners to reunite
broken-up pairs? yes
By presenting lists of headwords and possible
collocates to match Do collocation
exercises ask learners to find the odd one out? no - Do collocation exercises target multiple new collocations in one go?
yes By introducing multiple collocations in the same exercise
Do collocation exercises generate errors?
yes By working with broken collocations without providing model use
Do collocation exercises rely on
corrective feedback? yes
By not providing model use of collocations to consider before answering
exercises Do exercises contain collocations with semantically similar words? yes Through exercises providing groups of similar words collocating
with the same word
4.3.1 Summary
The answers from the analysis and evaluation questions indicate to what extent the textbook aligns with the recommendations from recent research. The first evaluation question results in a score of three. For the related analysis questions, a positive answer was given in three out of six questions, revealing that targeted collocations include 22 verb-noun and 11 adjective-noun collocations, as well as 28 words beyond the 2000-band. No targeted collocations were of the type adverb-adjective or present in the list for 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007). The second evaluation question results in a score of two. For the related analysis questions, a positive answer was given in one out of three questions, showing that the term ‘collocate’ is present in one exercise and that no exercises made learners aware of L1-L2 differences or provided etymological elaboration. The third evaluation question results in a score of one. For the related analysis questions, a positive answer was given in one out of five questions, revealing that exercises do not point out alliteration, rhyme, near-rhyme, and that targeted collocations are not recycled five times or more. One collocation was presented in context before being targeted in an exercise. The fourth evaluation question results in a score of one. For the related analysis questions, a positive answer is given in zero out of two questions, meaning that exercises do not urge learners to look for required information in collocation dictionaries or corpus-based resources.
The fifth evaluation question results in a score of two. For the related analysis questions a positive answer is given in one out of three questions, revealing that exercises do not provide model input or work with intact collocations. Learners are given hints in the form of italicized collocates in one ‘fill the gaps’ exercise. The sixth evaluation question results in a score of five. For the related analysis questions, a positive answer is given in five out of six questions. This shows that exercises require learners to reunite broken-up pairs, introduce multiple
collocations at one, generate errors, rely on feedback and contain semantically similar words. The exercises do not, however, ask learners to ‘find the odd one out’.
5. Discussion
The discussion will be structured as follows: First, the findings from the evaluation questions will be interpreted, discussed, and put in relation to the body of research presented in the literature review. Next, the findings will be discussed in the light of the Swedish curriculum, with a special interest in the core contents introduced in the introduction. Lastly, the
discussion will be directed to pedagogical implications and recommendations based on the findings before ending in a brief commentary on limitations of the study and future research implications.
5.1 Blueprint B 3.0
The first evaluation question considers the explicit attention given to useful collocations by the textbook. ‘Adverb-adjective’ is the only collocation type recommended by research which is not present. However, given the fact that 34 out of 35 targeted collocations in the textbook are of the type ‘verb-noun’ or ‘adjective-noun’, it is arguable that the textbook aligns with recommendations for which type of collocations to give explicit attention (e.g Snoder, 2019). The list of 100 most common collocations in spoken English (Nation & Shin, 2007) poses a good source for selecting which collocations to give explicit attention, especially in relation to the Swedish curriculum’s description of informal contexts (Skolverket Slutgitligt förslag för
kusplan engelska, 2019). Despite the vast coverage of collocations from Nation and Shin’s
(2007) list with 80 collocations occurring throughout the textbook, none of them are explicitly targeted in exercises. One reason for this might be that Nation and Shin’s (2007) list is based on spoken language, while the collocation exercises in the textbook worked with written text.
Another alarming finding is that out of the 91 targeted multi-word items targeted in
collocation exercises, just 35 collocations could be identified with the Longman Collocations Dictionary and Thesaurus (2013). There are two possible reasons for this: 1) the textbook used other inclusion criteria for determining collocations, and 2) the textbook failed to target established collocations in 56 instances. In both cases, it can be argued that the selection of collocations to give explicit attention is not optimal. Regarding the words constituting the 35 targeted collocations, 28 out of 70 words appear in the 3.000-10,000-bands in the list of
headwords for the first 10.000 words (Nation, 2006). However, twelve of the words were not present in either 1000-band, leaving 30 words in the first two thousand lists. To consider the words as ranging beyond the 10.000-band would be reasonable. In relation to Nizkonzia & van de Poel’s (2014) suggestion of targeting collocations with words beyond the 2000-band, the textbook would follow the recommendations to a good extent when counting the
unidentified words as beyond the 10.000-band.
The second evaluation question examines to what extent the textbook provides information about collocations. The exercises targeting collocations do not include any etymological elaboration. In one case though, learners are encouraged to look up the meaning of words they are not familiar with, which could potentially lead them to sources such as corpora or
collocation dictionaries which can include etymological information, given that they take the initiative to look up the meaning of the words as parts of collocations. Since there is no elaboration in the actual textbook though, it is hard to argue that the textbook itself provides any direct opportunity. The same can be argued about differences in the target and native language for Swedish learners. Of the twelve exercises targeting collocations, one is a translation exercise. This type of exercise does open the possibility for thinking about
differences in languages, as recommended by Fan (2009) and Fazlali and Shanini (2019), but no further instructions or explanations are given to explore this aspect.
Regarding terminology of collocations, just one term is mentioned: collocate, which is one of the two terms Snoder (2019) suggests including. This term, however, is only present in one of the twelve exercises, without a clear explanation of what it means. From the context, learners are able to predict the meaning, since it is used for explaining the relationship between two words in a collocation, but since no definition is given, it would be reasonable to consider the term as used but not introduced. The information given in the preface on the textbook’s approach of teaching collocations does not include terminology of collocations but does provide an L1 explanation of the phenomena. The textbook’s authors also explain that collocations should be treated as lexical units and that learners should explore the usage of collocations in their natural context. Both of these points align with recommendations from Boers & Strong (2017). To what extent the textbook lives up to these notions will be discussed in the next evaluation question.
