A GENRE AND COLLOCATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEAR-SYNONYMS TEACH, EDUCATE AND INSTRUCT: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH

Abstract

This study investigated three synonymous verbs, teach, educate, and instruct, in terms of their collocational patterns and distribution across genres. Data were drawn from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2021) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings from this investigation revealed that from distribution patterns among text types, teach is far more widely and commonly used than educate and instruct, with the highest frequency among eight genres. The frequency data also revealed that all three synonyms are preferred in formal genres than in spoken conversation, as represented by academic literature. The results also revealed that grouping of noun collocates into categories offers more insightful information about each target synonym’s co-occurring authentic use. This can be more helpful to EFL students than simply looking up a term in a dictionary or relying on native speakers’ intuition, which may not be dependable or trustworthy.