Teaching writing exercises at twelfth grade english textbook

Abstract

Thesis entitledTeaching Writing Exercises at Twelfth Grade English Textbookis an attempt to identify and analyze the writing exercises included in the English textbook for grade twelve and to explore how far the writing exercises are designed based on Nunan (2004) taxonomy of task types. To fulfill the objectives of the study I have adoptedcontent analysis research design. Questionnaires for English teachers and observational check-list were used as major tools to collect data. In the process of this study, I collected data from primary sources that are the English Textbook of Grade Twelve through observational check-list and questionnaires. The obtained data were tabulated and analyzed using a simple statistical tool. It was found that there were 36 writing exercises included in the text book. Similarly, it was found that free writing exercises covered highest weightage i.e. 44.44 percentage,controlled and guided writing exercises covered equal weightage i.e. 27.77 percentage in the text book. On the other hand, it was found that 83.33 percentage writing tasks or exercises were designed according to Nunan (2004) taxonomy of tasks type, where 22.22 percentage cognitive writing tasks, 8.33 percentage interpersonal writing tasks, 27.77 linguistic writing tasks, 11.11 percentage affective writing exercises and 13.88 percentage creative tasks were included in the English textbook of grade 12; the remaining writing tasks were designed focusing the local environment, considering the historical and cultural importance. English textbook of grader twelve focuses various writing tasks according to their nature of writing like E-mail, news story, argumentative essay, press release, autobiography, description of an event and a person, summary, short account article and so on. To meet these objectives, writing exercises were graded into various types of controlled tasks like; combining, reproduction review, guided tasks like; parallel writing developing text through skeleton etc., free writing tasks like; explanatory, narrative etc., others being cognitive tasks, interpersonal tasks, linguistic tasks, affective tasks etc. This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction to the study which consists of background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitation of the study and operational definition of the key terms. Similarly, the second chapter contains of review of theoretical as well as empirical literature and implications for the study. Moreover, it includes the conceptual framework. Likewise, the third chapter incorporates the methods and procedures of the study, which covers design and method of the study, population, sample and sampling strategies, research tools, sources of data, data collection procedures and data analysis procedures. In the same way, the fourth chapter includes the analysis and interpretation of the data. Furthermore, the fifth chapter incorporates the findings and conclusions of the study followed by some recommendations based on the study. Finally, the references and the appendices, which are necessary to the validation of the research, have also been presented.