Promoting Intellectual Skills: Teachers’ Practices and Attitudes A cognitive Study: An Evaluation of the English File Upper-intermediate Students’ Book Used at Modern Languages School of Tizi-Ouzou

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Date

2020

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou

Abstract

The present study seeks at evaluating the activities implemented in the English File Upperintermediate Students’ Book used in Modern Languages School of Tizi-Ouzou in promoting learners’ intellectual skills. To investigate this issue, three main objectives have been set respectively. The first objective is to determine whether the upper-intermediate textbook activities engage MLS EFL learners in significant learning experience. The second objective is to see whether these same activities foster learners’ cognition. Then, the third objective is to find out MLS English teachers’ views towards the effectiveness of the textbook activities intended for upper-intermediate learners in enhancing their intellectual skills. The corpus of the current research consists of twenty randomly selected activities analyzed on the basis of the Significant Learning Taxonomy developed by DEE Fink in 2003. This set of data has been supplemented by a semi-structured questionnaire addressed to five MLS teachers teaching English to upper-intermediate EFL classes to figure out and measure the attitudes they hold towards the issue under study. A mixed method approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods, has been adopted to process the obtained data. The quantitative part has been devoted to process the different numerical data and percentages using the rule of three, while the qualitative part has concerned the interpretation of the open-ended questions through the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA). The results sorted out from the textbook evaluation have revealed that EFL upper-intermediate learners at Modern Languages School are actively engaged in significant learning experiences and that the activities are of significant importance in fostering their cognitive faculties along the target language. These same results have also shown that DEE Fink’s Taxonomy is partly reflected throughout the textbook since only the four first learning dimensions are emphasized. Moreover, the answers provided by the teachers to the questionnaire have indicated their positive attitudes concerning the importance of the English File Upper-intermediate Students’ Book activities relied on in MLS in developing learners’ intellectual skill. Finally, the research has provided some recommendations for further research in the field of intellectual skill development.

Description

30cm ; 82p.

Keywords

Intellectual skills, Significant Learning Experience, Fink’s Taxonomy, English File Upper-intermediate Students’ Book.

Citation

Language and Communication