Effects of Lexico-syntactic Errors on Teaching Materials: A Study of Textbooks Written by Nigerians

Abstract

This study examined lexico-syntactic errors in selected textbooks written by Nigerians. Our focus was on the educated bilinguals (acrolect) who acquired their primary, secondary and tertiary education in Nigeria and the selected textbooks were textbooks published by Vanity Publishers/Press. The participants (authors) cut across the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria – Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and the selection of the textbooks covered the major disciplines of study. We adopted the descriptive research design and specifically employed the survey method to accomplish the purpose of our exploratory research.  The lexico-syntactic errors in the selected textbooks were identified and classified into various categories. These errors were not different from those identified over the years in students’ essays and exam scripts. This buttressed our argument that students are merely the conveyor belt of errors contained in the teaching material and that we can analyse the students’ lexico-syntactic errors in tandem with errors contained in the material used in teaching.