An evaluation of the tasks of IX-X textbook "English for Today": An empirical study

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate the tasks in the English textbook currently used in classes IX and X of Secondary Schools in Bangladesh. It attempts to find out if the tasks are communicative as claimed in the preface of the book. The study also seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the tasks by analyzing the perspectives of the teachers and the students through questionnaire survey. It is very unfortunate in our context that even after completing SSC (class X and IX), students from the Bangla medium schools are still unable to demonstrate sufficient competence in all the four skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) in the target language. Since, English is the second language for the learners of Bangladesh, the greatest amount of exposure they receive is in their English classes in school which is very much text book oriented. Therefore, in the light of the recent theoretical developments in the field, the study examines the effectiveness of the tasks of the textbook "English for today for class IX and V. The study looks at: (a) definitions of task, (b) task components, (c) framework, (d) task difficulty, (e) empirical basis for task-based language teaching, and (f) focus on form in task- based language teaching. For this empirical research, the researcher used teachers' and students' questionnaire along with a researcher's checklist to evaluate the book. The results show that the tasks are very effective with a few drawbacks in some areas.