Examining and comparing English textbooks and high-stakes exams in Turkey

2021-08-15
Few empirical studies have investigated the relationship between textbooks and high-stakes exams despite the significance of both in language teaching and learning. The mismatch between EFL textbooks and high-stakes exams in linguistic foci may lead to further washback effects and additional mental as well as financial burdens to teachers and learners. This study aims to examine whether the high-school textbooks distributed by the Ministry of Education align with the high-stakes university entrance exams for the past decade in Turkey. Corpus-based analyses were conducted to compare the lexical and syntactic complexity of the texts from high-school level EFL textbooks and university entrance English exams. The results suggested that the exam corpus presented significantly higher levels of lexical sophistication and diversity than the textbook corpus; regarding the syntactic complexity, for all 14 traditional measures and the majority of the fine-grained indices of syntactic complexity, the exam corpus presented either higher or equal levels compared to the textbook corpus. The results indicate a significant discrepancy between the textbook and exam corpus. This mismatch may create potential negative washback effects on students' language learning. Suggestions are given for further textbook and exam designing and revising.
World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA)

Suggestions

Investigating Sources of Pre Service Teachers Self Efficacy For Preparing And Implementing Mathematical Tasks
YÜREKLİ, BİLGE; Işıksal Bostan, Mine; Çakıroğlu, Erdinç (2015-02-04)
The goal of this study was to understand pre-service teachers' self-efficacy beliefs for preparing and implementing mathematical tasks and to explore which sources of self-efficacy they wighted and interpreted when judging their capabilities as a result of attending a mathematics teaching methods course designed with a focus on mathematics teaching through tasks. Nine pre-service teachers participated in this study and they were interviewed at the end of the methods course. Findings revealed that methods co...
Investigating middle school mathematics teachers‟ mathematical knowledge for teaching algebra: a multiple case study
Girit, Dilek; Akyüz, Didem; Department of Elementary Education (2016)
The aim of this study was to examine middle school mathematics teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching generalization of patterns and operations with algebraic expressions in planning and implementing processes. Data were collected from two middle school mathematics teachers who worked in the same public school throughout the instruction of algebra unit at 7th grade. In data collection process, lesson plans prepared by the teachers, pre-observation interviews, observations, field notes, and post-obser...
Investigating perceptions of preservice mathematics teachers on their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) regarding geometry
Bulut, Aykut; Işıksal Bostan, Mine; Department of Elementary Science and Mathematics Education (2012)
The aim of this study is to investigate perceptions of preservice mathematics teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) regarding geometry. In addition, the purpose is to examine the relationships among the components of TPACK. Moreover, possible gender and year of enrollment differences related to preservice mathematics teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge dimensions are examined. This research study has been conducted with 780 preservice mathematics teachers who are en...
The nature and development of interaction among components of pedagogical content knowledge in practicum
Aydın, Sevgi; Demirdogen, Betul; Akın Çelebi, Fatma; Kondakçı, Esen; Tarkin, Aysegul (2015-02-01)
This secondary analysis study focused on how interactions among preservice teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) components developed throughout a 14-week CoRe-based mentoringenriched practicum course, and the nature of those interactions. Data were collected from three preservice teachers, information-rich cases, by the use of content representation (CoRe) and semi-structured interviews. Content analysis and the constant comparative method were employed in the data analysis. Results revealed that t...
Examining and comparing English textbooks and high-stakes exams in Turkey: A Corpus-Based Study
Yu, Xiaoli (2020-06-17)
Textbooks, as the de facto syllabi in elementary and secondary education, largely influence thepedagogical practice in classrooms. Hence, textbook research is of considerable importance inshaping educational constructions. Meanwhile, research in assessment, in particularstandardized examinations, has revealed substantial washback effects on both teaching andlearning. However, in the field of English language education in Turkey, few empirical studieshave been conducted to investigate the relationship betwee...
Citation Formats
X. Yu, “Examining and comparing English textbooks and high-stakes exams in Turkey,” presented at the World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Groningen, Hollanda, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/92648.