This study aimed at investigating the use of request forms presented in Richard's Interchange Series, Books I, II, and III, widely used in Iranian foreign language teaching Institutes. For this purpose, Alcon et al.'s (2005) taxonomy of peripheral modification devices used in requests was used to locate the instance of request forms in such texts. Results showed that the series fail to include materials which are needed for meaningful and, at the same time, face saving communication when resort

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... to different kinds of requests is required. A large number of peripheral modification devices are not presented in the texts studied and those which have received some attention are different in terms of frequency of exposure. Also, there is no balance between the presentation of internal and external modifications in the different books studied. The findings of this study have implications for textbook writers, materials developers, language teachers and learners.