ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between corpus linguistics and the grammatical content of published teaching materials used in English language teaching (ELT). It begins by providing a brief historical review, pointing out where empirical, corpus-like evidence was used to develop grammatical accounts of English from around the end of the nineteenth century. Following this, it reviews studies that have examined and critiqued the content of contemporary ELT materials (coursebooks and grammars) with reference to corpus data, discussing arguments put forward for why such pedagogical accounts might differ from the evidence provided by corpus research. The chapter then turns to the question of how corpus evidence can be used to build explanations of grammar used in teaching materials, touching on the issue of authenticity. Finally, the question of the ordering of grammatical elements in coursebook syllabuses is examined, including a discussion of how learner corpora calibrated for competency level may be able to tell us something about the development sequences learners follow as they pass through competency levels and how this may be used to inform teaching materials.
