A Social Semiotic Analysis of the Teaching of Speaking Skill in EFL Textbooks: New Prospects and Bridges
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Date
2015-09-17
Authors
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Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
The present study compares the teaching of the speaking skill in two secondary third year
EFL textbooks: the Algerian New Prospects and Bridges, which is French. It investigates
classroom speaking activities with Brown’s (2004) classification of classroom speaking
performance and the representation of culture in the visuals of this section using social
semiotics approach, Grammar of Visual Design by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006). This
dissertation reaches a number of results: the questions of both textbooks target the same type
of classroom speaking performance though with different focuses. They both neglect the same
types of speaking activities. Moreover, the visuals of New Prospects and Bridges include
different cultural representations. The main conclusion drawn from this work is that though
both EFL textbooks’ objective is the teaching of the communicative competence, each one
concentrates on a different strategy. Moreover, they neglect practices, namely imitative and
intensive questions, which proved their efficiency in communication development.
Furthermore, they do not follow the same principle in their representations of culture. When
New Prospects makes use of the three EFL textbooks’ types of cultures suggested by Cortazzi
and Jin (1999), Bridges concentrates on the target culture only.
Description
71p.;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Citation
Applied Linguistics and Social Semiotics