Lexis in English Textbooks in Iran: Analysis of Exercises and Proposals for Consciousness-Raising Activities

This study intended to investigate how English lexis is treated in English textbooks in Iranian high schools. The main objective was to examine the vocabulary exercises in the current English language textbooks used in Iranian high schools and to propose some guidelines to enhance vocabulary teaching. Willis and Willis (1996) consciousness-raising was used as the theoretical framework. The four authorized textbooks used in this study were: English Book 1, English Book 2, English Book 3 and English for Pre-University Students. These textbooks were published in 2004 by the Iranian Ministry of Education. A coding scheme based on the categories of the theoretical framework was developed to codify the vocabulary exercises in the books. Results indicated that none of the exercises in English book 1, 2 and 3 could be considered to raise learners’ consciousness. These textbooks include exercises such as gap filling and selecting appropriate forms or words. There were 182 exercises in English for Pre-university Students (book 4), and only 18 exercises lend themselves to the features of consciousness-raising. Overall, only 1.02 percent of the exercises in the four textbooks could be categorized under consciousness-raising. It was also found that the exercises mainly concentrated on individual words (nearly 26%) and placed little emphasis on fixed expressions (about 0%), lexical collocations (nearly 15%) and grammatical collocations (nearly 2%). It can, thus, be concluded that students are mainly dealing with meanings of individual words and not with how words are used with other words or in what patterns they appear in sentences. It is obvious that even though learners may gain some knowledge of meanings of individual words through the exercises, they will not be able to use them since they do not learn how to use them in combination with other words. Some suggestions to enhance vocabulary exercises are stated.