Dissertation analysis of phraseological content in English teaching: materials and teachers’ attitudes

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 
The results of the two surveys are presented in two different sections. In 5.1, the 
results from the examination of the textbooks are accounted for in detail, and in 5.2, the 
results from the questionnaires are presented and analyzed. 
5.1 Examination of Textbooks 
5.1.1 Examination of English Alive! 3
English Alive! 3 by Oxford University Press is a widely used book in the Region of in 
Murcia. All the units are structured in the same form: Vocabulary-Reading-Grammar-
Vocabulary-Listening-Grammar 
consolidation-Reading-Writing-Practical 
English. 
The 
speaking sections varies depending on the unit and they appear on their own or together with 
some other skills (e.g. Speaking and Reading). It also includes a cultural reading or a song in 
each unit and a Starter Unit at the beginning of the book with the purpose of revising some 
essential elements from past years. 
This book does not contain specific exercises devoted to the systematic teaching of 
phraseological units. Nevertheless, we can find how, indirectly, it includes some specific 
collocation exercises such as the ones in Unit 3 (page 28) to find make/do collocates, or, the 
Phrase Bank included in every Practical English section, in which we can observe how some 
social routine formulae are stressed. 
Collecting the global results, we obtain the following figures: 
COLLOCATIONS 
IDIOMS 
PROVERBS 
ROUTINE 
FORMULAE 
1.024 
17 
0 
75 
As we can observe, differences among categories are huge. The number of 
collocations is far bigger than the remaining three. It is quite normal since the possibility of 
collocates of a particular word can be more variable than, for example, the one of idioms 

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which usually has a higher degree of fixedness. Proverbs, on the other hand, are totally 
nonexistent. 
Regarding the focus of the phraseological units in the different activities, we obtain the 
following figures: