Abstract
This piece examines how ideational meaning (knowledge about the world) in English is built through the first and second grade EFL textbooks delivered by the Chilean Ministry of Education to public schools. Textbooks are often the main source of knowledge foreign language learners have so it is relevant to know the nature of that knowledge. Ideational meaning was examined by identifying the lexical items in the textbooks, nouns in particular as they are the most productive semantic elements in discourse. The analysis was carried out by means of two analytical tools: 1) the corpus analysis tool AntConc, and 2) the system of ideation that Systemic Functional Linguistics offers to describe ideational meaning. AntConc allows for the recognition of lexical elements, their frequency, and progression of complexity. The system of ideation contributes to the description of the semantic relations among these elements and, therefore, the kind of knowledge the textbooks build. Findings suggest that the ideational meanings that these textbooks build are related to the familiar world of the learners, shaping entities like family, school, food, holidays, etc. This is accomplished mainly by the semantic relation of repetition, observed both through AntConc and the system of ideation. Therefore, common sense knowledge is dominant in the textbooks. Besides, there is progression from one textbook to the other, shown through an upgrade in lexical density and lexical complexity. Results suggest these textbooks may help EFL learners build the knowledge they need as building blocks for the acquisition of the foreign language.
Presenters
Andrea LizasoainAssistant Professor, Instituto de Lingüística y Literatura, Universidad Austral de Chile, Los Ríos, Chile Jorge Vargas Mutizabal
Student, M.A Language Pedaogy, University of Utah, Utah, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
EFL TEXTBOOK, PRIMARY SCHOOL, IDEATIONAL MEANING, CORPUS ANALYSIS, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
