LINGUISTIC COMPLEXITY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOK AT SECONDARY LEVEL: A FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The textbooks are the primary source of English input in Pakistani secondary classrooms and according to the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory, the language of well-graded materials is increasingly abstract, increasingly dense, and increasingly grammatically complex. The present study was an examination of the level of linguistic complexity in the revised Grade 9 English textbook published by the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board (PCTB) using three indicators of SFL namely lexical density (LD), nominalization and grammatical intricacy (GI). Eight prose units (6,229 running words, 648 ranking clauses) were annotated in UAM Corpus Tool 6 and each clause and nominalization candidate was checked manually using a corpus-based mixed analytical approach. The primary LD measure was Halliday’s lexical items per ranking clause; the other measure used was Ure’s percentage measure, used as a supplementary indicator. The level of complexity of the units varied. The range of LD was “Value of Time” from 4.03 to “Patriotism” at 7.29, of nominalization from 0.21 to 0.64, and of GI from 1.60 to 2.11, with the highest scores for “Patriotism” and “Quality Education: A Key to Success” and the lowest score for “Value of Time”. The overall corpus figures for LD, nominalization and GI were 5.58, 0.46 and 1.85 respectively. All indicators were not monotonic across the series of units (Spearman ρ ranged from −.14 to .31 and all of them were greater than .45). Both LD and nominalization increased together (ρ = .93), while GI was independent of both such that there were no units that were always the simplest, or the most complex. The textbook thus has no systematic, sequential development of complexity. Sequencing of units, based upon an SFL-informed audit, and a clear teaching of nominalization and clause-combining are recommended.