An Evaluation of the Writing Tasks of the New English for Ethiopia Textbook: Grade Twelve in Focus

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to evaluate all the writing tasks in the grade twelve English for Ethiopia students’ textbook in order to find out whether the writing tasks in the textbook are designed according to the theories of communicative tasks. So as to achieve the expected objectives, the writing tasks were identified and analyzed based on the components of communicative tasks and nature of communicative tasks as the framework and checklists suggested by Nunan (1989) for the communicative tasks. The data for the study were collected through document analysis, questionnaires and interviews. English for Ethiopia grade twelve students’ textbook, 40 students and 3 teachers of the Gedebano General secondary and preparatory school were the sources of the data for the study. In order to analyze the data, the researcher used quantitative and qualitative methods. As the findings of the study indicated that the objectives of the writing tasks are stated explicitly in a way that students could understand them easily. However, most of the objectives are not motivating and interesting because they lack variety or there are redundancies. Most of the inputs in the textbook lack motivational value/authenticity; however, the writing activities are appropriate to the communicative goals of the tasks because they are presented accordance with the input data. Besides, the role of the students are clearly stated in the textbook and the roles are tried to keep the principles of communicative language teaching approach by forwarding them a greater role in performing the activities. Moreover, the writing tasks in the textbook are highly integrated with the other language skills. Almost all of the writing tasks in the textbook are intended to encourage language use/meaning rather than language forms/structures. Similarly, there is a few in number narrative and argumentative types of writing activities. Finally, so as to encourage students to practice mechanics such as punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc no writing activities are given as well as no attention is given for cohesion, coherence and cohesive devices to teach students how to produce well organized writing. As a result, it is recommended that textbook writers/material developers for ELT classroom should give focus on the basic components of communicative task, nature of communicative task and on the appropriateness of writing tasks in improving students’ writing abilities. Further, teachers have to play their role effectively by making some adjustment on the writing tasks when their students come up with any