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

3. AIMS 
The aim of this essay is to investigate whether and how phraseological units are used 
as part of EFL teaching in different high schools of the Region of Murcia. The investigation 
concerns the occurrence of idioms, collocations, social routine formulae and proverbs in 
English textbooks and the attitudes twenty-four English teachers show towards using them in 
their teaching. Our research questions are:
1. Do English textbooks in the Region of Murcia provide students with the 
required phraseological input to let students reach the requested 
objectives? 
In order to answer this question, we are going to determine the phraseological content 
of two English textbooks widely used in the Region focusing our attention on the number of 
phraseological units they contain, the focus of the activities in which they are inserted and the 
skills in which they are practiced. Therefore, we need to respond to four main assumptions 
related to the following aspects: 
1. What type of phraseological units (idioms, proverbs, social routine formulae and 
collocations) are contained in the books? 
We truly expect to find examples of the four categories involved in this study, since 
the four of them are necessary to fulfill the objectives requested by the Official Gazette of the 
Region of Murcia. 
2. How many phraseological units of each category do the books offer? 
We expect both books will provide students with a higher amount of collocations and 
social routine formulae than that of proverbs and idioms, since these categories are most 
commonly used in the daily speech. 
3. What type of activity they appear in? (Linguistic or communicative)

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As these two books are supposed to have a communicative nature, they must be 
intended to employ a communicative training, therefore, we expect that most phraseological 
units appear in communicative activities. 
4. Is there any balance in the use of phraseological content in the different skills 
(speaking, listening, reading, and writing)? 
We expect to find a balance of phrasemes in the four skills above mentioned since 
they all have great importance in the communicative function of a language and because the 
communicative approach does not favor any skills over the others. 
After answering these questions for each manual, we will finish our analysis 
commenting on the existing differences, if any, between both books regarding phraseological 
content and the level of learning of the students.