Chapter published in:
Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts: In honor of Merja Kytö
Edited by Ewa Jonsson and Tove Larsson
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 97] 2020
► pp. 283–300

Chapter 17
“If anyone would have told me, I would have not believed it”

Using corpora to question assumptions about spoken vs. written grammar in EFL grammars and other normative works

| Uppsala University
| Uppsala University

The aim of this chapter is to critically examine the accuracy of the advice on formal, written grammar offered in EFL teaching materials and other normative works. We use corpus data to investigate the use of four grammatical features often labelled as “informal” or “spoken” and find that the guidelines presented in university textbooks and other normative sources do not always match actual usage. Our findings call for a re-examination of the role of prescriptivism in teaching materials and in the language classroom, especially regarding the use of the split infinitive, like meaning ‘such as,’ and the conjunct though.

Keywords: normative works, prescriptivism, corpus studies, EFL instruction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and method
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Conditional would have
    • 3.2Three uses of like
    • 3.3 Though as a conjunct
    • 3.4The “split” infinitive
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 05 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.97.17sch
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