Form-focused or meaning-focused? : Grammar tasks in EFL textbooks for English 5 in upper secondary school

Sammanfattning: This paper investigates what role grammar plays, what grammatical content is included, and whether focus on form or meaning dominates in six EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks for English 5. Through the methodology content analysis, the grammatical content is calculated, categorized, and analyzed with coding frames in three parts: form-focused instruction and grammar tasks and meaning-focused instruction and grammar tasks, context, and grammatical categories. The results show that form-focused instruction and grammar tasks dominate over meaning-focused instruction and grammar tasks in all textbooks. The proportions of form-focused grammar task range from 74% to 100%. When it comes to context, in all textbooks but one, grammar tasks are both placed in separate grammar sections and integrated in the texts. Furthermore, there is a considerable degree of variation between the textbooks in terms of the proportions of grammatical categories. In form-focused grammar tasks, the highest frequencies were seen in verbs, the mixed category, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives and adverbs. In meaning-focused grammar tasks, verbs, the mixed category, and adjectives and adverbs have the highest frequencies. Even though the textbooks treat grammar rather similarly, the grammatical content and the proportions of tasks differ.