What use do ELT coursebook authors make of language corpora during the writing process?

What is it about?

Despite years of research in corpus linguistics, many features of English Language Teaching coursebooks have appeared to remain stubbornly free of influence of research findings. This is contrast to learner dictionaries, which for decades have made healthy use of corpora. To investigate the reasons beyond this, a number of current coursebook authors were surveyed as to their use of and attitudes towards corpora in the writing process.

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Why is it important?

There is a poor understanding of the workings of ELT publishing within Applied Linguistics. There is often the assumption that findings from corpus linguistics will automatically make their way into teaching materials, because authors and publishers will be actively looking at research and trying to incorporate it. However, the reality is different – publishers, as commercial organisations, have little incentive to innovate unless such innovation is explicitly requested by their target markets. Individual authors will not necessarily be encouraged and supported to use corpora by their publisher, and, probably more importantly, are in most cases unlikely to have time to do so during the writing process.