An Evaluation of the Writing Skill in the Third Year Middle School English Course Book ‘My Book of English’

Abstract

The present research has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness and appropriateness of the writing tasks in the third year middle school course book ‘My book of English’. It also attempts to shed light on the teacher’ perspectives and whether the course book meets their expectations and objectives in teaching the writing skill. It based on the hypothesis that if the course book ‘My book of English’ provides sufficient and appropriate content for teaching the writing skill third year middle school(MS) pupils would improve their writing. Hence, this research is composed of three chapters, the first one is about text book evaluation and the second one concerns the writing skill under the major teaching methods. The third chapter, which is the practical part, concerning the research tools, an adapted checklist is used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the course book ‘My book of English’ in terms of writing tasks. Besides, a questionnaire was submitted to 15 third year middle school teachers working at eight different middle schools in Jijel in order to gather the data about their perspective towards the appropriateness of the writing tasks included in ‘ My book of English’ course book. The results obtained showthat ‘My book of English’ coursebook is not really effective and appropriate in teaching the writing skill and it does not match pupils’ actual level.