A corpus-based approach to comparing English textbook pedagogies: The case of Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China

The current study considers the notion that English textbooks produced for different markets are likely to manifest different pedagogical emphases. The study begins the research context by contemplating possible similarities and differences between English textbooks produced in two neighbouring markets, Hong Kong (HK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), citing socio-historical and educational reasons to elucidate why there could be a first impression of differences in the two sets of textbooks. A simple consideration of these factors does not aid an understanding of the teaching dispositions of these materials. The present study uses a corpus-based hermeneutic approach to examine collocational patterns in the task instructions of textbooks. Collocations within this section can effectively capture local teaching practices, as it is in these places task purposes are announced and pedagogies are specified. The findings section presents two collocation lists generated from the two textbook corpora. Based on these lists, the researcher interprets the local teaching practices of the textbooks. Key issues to be discussed include the distribution of four skills in the textbooks, different styles of literacy training, the strong lexical-grammatical focus of the PRC textbooks, and the genre-aware approach of the HK textbooks.