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

ENGLISH ALIVE! 3 BRIDGES I 
COLLOCATIONS 
NUMBER 
FOCUS 
SKILL 
COLLOCATIONS
 
NUMBER 
FOCUS 
SKILL 
Communicative 
584 
Writing 133 
Communicative 
591 
Writing 
169 
Linguistic 416 
Reading 
291 
Linguistic 763 
Reading 
281 
1.204 
Other 24 
Listening 
124 
1.386 
Other
32 
Listening 
167  
Speaking 
79 
Speaking 
76 
Other  397 
Other
693 
 
Regarding this category, we can see at first sight that the difference in number 
between these two books of different levels is not too high. However, what seems to be worth 
mentioning is the different focus of the activities in which collocations are inserted and the 
dissimilar use of these phrasemes regarding the different skills. Bridges I, as we already 
know, is a book for first year of Bachillerato. At this level students are supposed to have a 
greater competence in the four skills of the language, however, we can see through the results 
of the table that most collocations appear in linguistic activities and although they also occur 
within the four skills, there is a significant difference between the mechanical and other 
linguistic activities and the four communicative competences. On the other hand, we have 
English Alive 3. Despite belonging to a lower level and offering, therefore, more basic 
concepts, this book shows more collocations within a communicative focus and with a higher 
rate of use in the four main competences, being still predominant the occurrences in 
mechanical drills, cultural activities or other not communicative-oriented exercises. 
It is also important to mention that Bridges I mentions the notion „collocation‟ as 
something new for the learners and tries to make them conscious of their occurrence and 
importance, nevertheless, they are tackled always from a purely linguistic point of view and 
without opportunities for students to do some research or to learn more collocates by 
themselves. English Alive 3, in spite of devoting a couple of exercises to the teaching of 
collocations, does not explain what a collocation is, and the occurrences it contains are mostly 
incidental or occasional. 
Results for proverbs are not very encouraging: 

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