EVALUATING PAKISTANI ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS THROUGH CORPUS-BASED FREQUENCY AND COLLOCATION ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study investigates the lexical frequency and collocation patterns in Pakistani English textbooks used at the secondary school level, employing a corpus-based approach to evaluate their linguistic authenticity, representativeness, and pedagogical relevance. A small corpus was compiled from selected chapters of English textbooks prescribed by the Punjab Textbook Board. The analysis focused on high-frequency words, lexical coverage, and collocation patterns, compared against a reference corpus (British National Corpus). The findings reveal a limited lexical range, frequent overuse of certain pedagogical words, and a lack of natural collocations, which raises concerns about the communicative efficacy of these materials. The study emphasizes the importance of integrating corpus-informed methods into textbook development to align ESL instruction with real language use.