Phrasal Verbs in Malaysian ESL Textbooks

It is often claimed that ELT textbook materials are mostly unwittingly intuitively- rather than empirically-based and that this bookish form of language is far from reflecting the real language use. The present study, by adopting a corpus-based approach, tends to shed light on the extent of agreement between the Malaysian ESL textbooks and the empirical corpus findings with regard to the inclusion and presentation of the phrasal verb combinations. Results, it is hoped, can provide enough insight into the textbook-related difficulties nonnative speakers might experience in learning phrasal verbs and the areas of the pedagogy in need of supplementary activities.