An Investigation of Support for Productive Skills in textbooks : A mixed method study of grade 8 materials

Sammanfattning: English language learning materials take a central role in Swedish secondary schools. The curriculum in Sweden advocates for communicative language teaching where students are expected to produce language in various contexts without restriction. There is much prior research on different textbooks used in Sweden. However, there has been limited analysis of how well a textbook aligns with the curriculum in terms of compliance with CLT expectations particularly for productive skills. As CLT preaches free production, it is important for teachers to know which books to choose for their courses to successfully incorporate the material to improve their students’ productive skills in various contexts. This study analysed Focus on English 8 which consists of a textbook and a workbook to shed some light on to what degree this textbook follows the Swedish curriculum with a focus on CLT aspects. This was done by using a mixed methods content analysis by conducting both a quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis was done by counting the amount of controlled to uncontrolled exercises in the textbook and workbook. In contrast, the qualitative analysis focused on the scaffolding present in the production exercises. Results show that while the book adheres to the curriculum, the textbook and workbook by themselves do not sufficiently facilitate free production. Thus, several steps outside the teaching materials need to be taken to encourage students to freely produce the language.