| dc.description.abstract | Since the national curriculum LK20 recently came into effect, there are many new or revised editions of English textbooks available for the Norwegian market. This master’s thesis investigates the presentation of grammar in four of these textbooks, and their accompanying workbooks, targeted toward pupils in year 5. The textbooks are examined through a directed content analysis, in which the grammar tasks are analysed and coded according to a coding framework I have developed. The primary goal of the framework is to categorize the data according to the presentation of grammar rules, at which level the grammar operates, what the activity type is, and which grammatical elements the tasks target. The categories in the framework are developed from relevant theory on grammar didactics, previous research on textbook grammar, and the data material itself. As this study only examines the textbooks and workbooks themselves, there is no information on how the teaching materials are utilized in the classrooms. In total, 368 tasks were identified and analysed according to the framework criteria. The results are presented and discussed according to each main category, in addition to a general overview.
The main findings show that many of the grammar tasks do not provide any explanation of the grammar rule at all. However, the tasks which do provide an explanation tend to use a deductive approach. The grammar is mostly presented at sentence and word level, but approximately one fifth of the tasks present the grammar in a continuous or semi-continuous discourse. The most common activity types are composition, categorization, multiple-choice, and gap-fill activities. There are few tasks focusing on syntax. Verbs are the most frequent grammatical feature, and verb tasks are primarily focused on subject-verb agreement and the simple past. There are also many tasks focusing on the adjective and noun word classes. | |
