Dr. Reza Rezvani & Yalda Hooman
Yasouj University & Zahedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran
Language students have long been engaged in guided or controlled writing tasks to be able to express their ideas freely and meet their needs. More recently, however, such activities have been found rather ineffective particularly beyond the earliest stages. Current literature on writing pedagogy suggests that traditional writing instruction be complemented or integrated with more process-oriented activities in order to foster students’ writing ability along with their interest and creativity. The current study aimed to examine and compare how Iran’s old and newly developed official English textbooks for junior high school approach writing English. All writing-related activities in both series including three books each, that is, Right path to English 1-3 and Prospect 1-3 were content-analyzed qualitatively. Results indicated that in comparison to the old textbook series which exclusively guided writing ability development through isolated and controlled activities, new textbooks involved both product- and process-oriented tasks. In keeping with the current emphasis on the integrated instruction and the profound impact of reading on writing, new materials were found to be on the right path to promote students’ writing ability through accommodating more linked activities. A noticeable asset of the new series, lacking in the older one, is its incremental structure setting out the development from the establishment of sound-spelling correspondence. The paper discusses the finding and implications in detail in the context of Iran’s public education.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Third International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 31 January-1February 2019 , Ahwaz.
