Material Critique for Touchstone 3rd Edition: on Corpus Analysis and Spoken Grammar

Abstract

This paper analysed the use of corpus and spoken language features in the English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebook “Touchstoneâ€. The corpus analysis was carried out by using the British National Corpus (BNC) which was chosen for its easy and free access. In doing the spoken language analysis, I refer to McCarthy and Carter’s (2015, p.5) argument which take the grammar of conversation as ‘the benchmark for a grammar of speaking’ by considering features such as ellipsis, heads and teailsm lexical bundles, and vagueness. The analysis indicated that the language used in this coursebook signified a certain level of authentic and natural language, although areas of improvement were also found.