Lexical Aspect in EFL Textbooks: A Case Study of the Iranian High School English Coursebook Prospect Grade ۹

The aim of this study was to examine the distribution of lexical aspect types in the Grade ۹ Iranian high school English coursebook Prospect. To obtain the required data, lexical verbs were extracted manually from the selected texts of the textbook. The corpus consisted of seven conversations and five reading passages representing the main instructional input of the book. To analyze the data, a descriptive quantitative content analysis was conducted based on Vendler's four lexical aspect categories: state, activity, achievement, and accomplishment. Auxiliary and modal verbs were excluded from the analysis. Frequencies and percentages were calculated to determine the distribution of each verb type. The findings of this study revealed that state verbs were the most frequent category, followed by activity verbs, while achievement and accomplishment verbs occurred considerably less often. It is suggested that this distribution has pedagogical implications, as limited exposure to telic and event-based verb types may influence learners' development of aspectual understanding. Greater balance in verb type representation could enhance learners' exposure to a wider range of aspectual distinctions.

کلیدواژه ها:

lexical aspect ، state verbs ، activity verbs ، achievement verbs ، and accomplishment verbs.