The purpose of this research study was to ascertain the extent of occurrences of multi-word units and lexical phrases in general course books used to teach English as a Second Language to non-academic adult students. It sought to answer the following questions: Is the vocabulary instruction in these textbooks implicit or explicit? What kind of and how many multi-word units and lexical phrases are used? Are they integrated into the body of the text? Is there any reference to the functions of the language or to corpus research that would explain the choice of lexical items used in the text? The answers to these questions were obtained by analyzing two randomly selected chapters from the 12 most popular ESL series used by non-credit students in a major metropolitan community college. The introductions and the teachers' manuals were also examined. The findings indicated that although all the textbooks used some or all of the seven categories of multi-word units and lexical phrases, the selection and organization of these was very inconsistent and haphazard. The lexical content was not impacted by the findings of corpus research; rather, the structural organization of the book dictated the choice of lexis and functions.
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