Assessing the Higher Secondary Level Text Book through Reading and Writing Skills: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

The article aims to look at evaluating English for Today for Class XI-XII of the HSC Textbook in the light of reading and writing skills which has been prescribed by the NCTB (National Curriculum Textbook Board) of Bangladesh from the current academic session. Based on the questionnaire approach with the five HSC level English teachers and ten students from Scholars College, Tongi thana, Gazipur district, this study focuses on the reading and writing pedagogies to critically evaluate the effectiveness of the materials, and identifies the difficulties that teachers and students encounter. The findings of the study revealed a disparity between students’ needs and what the HSC reading and writing syllabus contains, and its actual implementation in the classroom. The teachers adopted an approach to reading and writing skills which was overridingly form-focused and product-oriented. They performed roles which were traditional, i.e., the teacher as a purveyor of knowledge and evaluator. Teachers have lack training in areas specific to the development of reading and writing skills and are unaware of recent developments in teaching and learning policy. This study contributed to the documentation of curriculum evaluation studies in the context of Bangladesh education system as well as frameworks for the assessment of reading and writing skills. Awareness has been raised about the hindering and helpful factors in bringing about a new change. General caution is suggested in the making of foreign methodologies appropriate to the HSC level textbook. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations are also made in relation to curriculum development and pedagogy of English for Today for Class XI-XII.