A Study on Routine Formulas and Downgraders of Request Act in High School English Textbooks

This paper examines high school English textbooks to ascertain if they appropriately reflect the kinds and frequencies of routine formulas and downgraders of request act used by English native speakers. It is important to present authentic routine formulas in textbooks for students to acquire proper, efficient and safe communication strategies to communicate with other English speakers. For the analysis, currently available 7 series of 21 high school English textbooks under the $7^{th}$ National Curriculum were selected. Each series of textbooks contains 3 school grade textbooks as High School English, High School English I, and High School English II. The results show that the high school English textbooks generally demonstrate a secund reflection of the English native speakers' use of request strategies and downgraders. That is, the textbooks were found to have presented mostly casual forms of routine formulas while they have not presented sufficient coverage of elaborated polite routine formulas for requesting which English native speakers frequently use. The presence of some kinds of the frequently used downgraders was also very small in proportion in the textbooks. More effort should be given to complement the deficiency in this area by teachers and researchers.