Abstract:
Textbooks provide a framework for the English language teaching curriculum. Among different skills and components covered in the ELT materials, reading comprehension is conceived as an inalienable skill required to expand the students’ knowledge of the language. Reading passages are accompanied by a set of questions to check the students’ comprehension and enhance their reading efficiency. Focusing on the reading sections of the newly compiled English textbook for the 12th-grade students, the current study attempted to investigate reading comprehension questions accompanying the reading passages in Vision 3 and its workbook adopting Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy. Furthermore, it elicited 80 teachers’ perspectives on the reading sections utilizing the relevant items from an eclectic checklist. To deepen the results, eight teachers also provided their comments. First, the reading comprehension questions in Vision 3 and its workbook were analyzed and assigned to the categories and subcategories proposed in the taxonomy. The frequency and percentage values showed that Language questions were the most frequent category in Vision 3 while Content questions were the most prevalent of all in the workbook. Among the subcategories of reading comprehension questions, Form questions were the commonest type in the student book whereas both Forma and Personal Response questions were the most frequent of all in the workbook. In addition, the results of the Kruskal Wallis test revealed a significant difference between the student book and its workbook in terms of the frequency of Content questions. The analysis of the teachers’ perspectives also demonstrated their discontent with the reading sections in that book that failed to provide the students authentic texts and challenging questions and activities. Notwithstanding the dramatic positive changes in Vision 3 concerning other skills and components, the findings showed that it needed to be revisited and revised considering the reading comprehension skills and sub-skills. The study raised the material developers’ consciousness about the existing reading comprehension questions in both the student book and its workbook. It further enabled the teachers to identify the missing types of questions and develop supplementary materials to enhance the students’ reading comprehension skills.
Machine summary:
Evaluating the Presentation and Practice of Reading Skill in Vision 3 and its Workbook Using Two Frames of Reference: Categories of a Taxonomy and Perspectives of English Teachers Mavadat Saidi1,* 1 Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran Submission date: 3 December, 2020 Acceptance date: 16 May, 2021 Abstract Textbooks provide a framework for the English language teaching curriculum.
Focusing on the reading sections of the newly compiled English textbook for the 12th-grade students, the current study attempted to investigate reading comprehension questions accompanying the reading passages in Vision 3 and its workbook adopting Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy.
The analysis of the teachers’ perspectives also demonstrated their discontent with the reading sections in that book that failed to provide the students authentic texts and challenging questions and activities.
The significance of paying attention to the reading comprehension sections lies in the fact that Vision 3 is introduced in the last grade of high school and serves as a platform for preparing the students to fulfill the academic tasks which mainly require the ability to read general and subject-specific reading passages (Atai, 2002; Rezaee, Taase, & Alishahi, 2016).
Instrumentation Considering the primary goal of the study, Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was utilized to assign the tasks and activities in the reading sections of the student book and workbook to their pertinent categories (i.
Moreover, other ELT textbooks and their accompanying workbooks might be studies in terms of their reading comprehension questions.