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

SKILL 
PROVERBS 
0 
Communicative  0 
Writing 0 
Linguistic 0 
Reading 0 
Other  0 
Listening 0 
Speaking 0 
Other  0 
TYPE OF PHRASEOLOGICAL 
UNIT 
NUMBER 
FOCUS 
SKILL 
SOCIAL ROUTINE 
FORMULAE 
75 
Communicative 54 
Writing 16 
Linguistic 21 
Reading 14 
Other 0 
Listening 26 
Speaking 0 
Other 19 
Surprisingly, idioms only appear in two units (1, 8) and most of them in unit 8 within 
exercises related to a reading comprehension activity (My heart was beating like a drum, My 

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legs were like jelly, It was as dark as night, The cake was as hard as a rock). Thus, their main 
focus is more linguistic than communicative, since they are studied taking into account 
linguistic features and not a particular communicative intention. The communicative idioms 
we observed were found in communicative readings that, this time, have a defined 
communicative purpose to transmit. Regarding skills, we just came across idioms in reading 
texts, one in a listening exercise and the remaining eleven, as we have already mentioned, in 
linguistic activities. 
We can affirm that collocations are present in all sections, being predominant over 
their analogous categories (91.8%). The focus of the activities in which they are inserted is 
mainly communicative, although it is closely followed by the linguistic one. Concerning the 
four skills, we can see that there is, to some extent, a balance between them, although the 
speaking area seems to be more reluctant to the use of this type of phraseme than the three 
remaining. There is a significant number of collocations present in mechanical exercises not 
belonging to any particular skill (38.8%). Some specific examples contained in Unit 1 are: 
first impressions (adjective-noun), eye contact (noun-noun), speak to (verb-preposition), 
interested in (adjective+ preposition), do homework (verb+noun).
Social Routine Formulae, on the other hand, basically appear in communicative 
activities (e.g. oral conversation: Hi, my name is…/ Pleased to meet you/ Thanks; written 
conventions: Dear Sir/Madam, I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Yours faithfully 
(Unit 7). With respect to the skills in which they are most commonly practiced, we are really 
surprised by the results: although there is a linear balance among writing, reading, listening, 
we did not find any social routine formulae at all in any speaking activities, something that 
really called our attention and made us reflect on the true usefulness of these type of 
phraseological units. 
As commented above, we did not find any proverb at all in this textbook.