An analysis of EFL coursebooks for explicit teaching of syntactic complexity

This study examined the EFL coursebook Language Hub for explicit focus on syntactic complexity across four proficiency levels: Elementary (A2), Pre-Intermediate (B1), Intermediate (B1+), and Upper Intermediate (B2). It specifically looked into the instructional sequencing of the explicitly addressed syntactic features in the student books following Biber et al.'s (2011) framework for the development of syntactic features, which includes five stages. It sought to answer the following research question: To what extent is the instructional order of the syntactic features in the EFL coursebook Language Hub aligned with the hypothesized developmental stages of syntactic complexity in L2 writing? To that end, the syntactic features in the Grammar and Vocabulary sections of the four student books which were explicitly addressed via structural emphasis (i.e., indicated by highlights, underlining, bold, colors, or detailed linguistic explanations) were manually coded using the specific syntactic features in Biber et al.'s (2011) framework. In total, 1294 syntactic features were coded, with 317 features in the A2 book, 472 in the B1 book, 206 in the B1+ book, and 299 in the B2 book. The most frequently occurring syntactic features were from Stage 2 and Stage 3: finite adverbial clauses, adverbs as adverbials, attributive adjectives, non-finite complement clauses controlled by a wider set of verbs, relative clauses, and prepositional phrases as adverbials. Syntactic features from higher-level stages of the framework (Stage 4 and Stage 5) demonstrated limited or no explicit focus. The results revealed both similarities and differences between the instructional order of the syntactic features in the EFL coursebook and their hypothesized developmental order. While partial alignment was observed between the two, the syntactic features were gradually sequenced over the coursebook levels, placing more complex variations of the same syntactic features in higher level student books (e.g., defining relative clauses at B1 level, but non-defining relative clauses at B1+ and B2 levels), as opposed to the framework which grouped all the variations of the same syntactic features within the same developmental stage. Findings are discussed, along with the theoretical and pedagogical implications. Limitations are acknowledged, and future research directions are offered.