An Evaluation of the Writing Component of the First Year Secondary School Textbook-at the croads-from Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

The present study aims to evaluate the writing component of the first year secondary school textbook of English “At the Crossroads” from secondary school teachers’ perspectives. This study based on the hypothesis that the more teachers base their teaching using the textbook on the principles of the competency-based approach and on their pupils’ needs and proficiency level, the more satisfied they will be with the writing component in the textbook of English “At the Crossroads”. The dissertation is presented in the form of three chapters. The first and the second chapters expose the theoretical aspects related to the writing skill and textbook evaluation. The third chapter is practical and presents the data collection procedure and the study findings. A questionnaire was submitted to a sample of 25 secondary school teachers of English in El-Milia/Jijel district, with the intent to know their views on the teaching of writing under the present approach, and on the writing component in “At the Crossroads”. The results revealed that the teachers acknowledged that they face some difficulties while teaching their pupils writing. The teachers also expressed their dissatisfaction with the writing parts included in the first year textbook of English. Moreover, they reported that the first year textbook corresponded to the principles of the competency-based approach, and that most of them followed the process approach to teaching writing, which does not fully match to what theory spells. The teachers claimed that the writing tasks matched to the general aims of teaching English, but not to their learners’ needs and levels of ability. This can confirm that existence of some problems in teaching first year secondary school pupils the writing skill. Based on these findings, which seem to confirm the hypothesis, some pedagogical recommendations are suggested.