Pronunciation in EFL Textbooks Published by Turkish Ministry of National Education

Abstract

Even with recent emerging technologies, textbooks still maintain their significance in language education (Richards, 2015) in the form of digitized resources (i.e. e-teaching materials) (Li, 2021). However, one concern voiced over textbooks is their failure to include pronunciation (Nikolić, 2018). Pronunciation is significant for successful communication (Pennington & Rogerson-Revell, 2019) and since teachers serve as role models for language learners (Richards, 2015), and textbooks are their primary teaching materials (King, 2010), this issue needs reconsideration. In Turkish primary and secondary education curricula, pronunciation is insignificant, almost excluded in the primary education curriculum and slightly included in the secondary one (Ministry of National Education, 2018a, 2018b). To this end, the English textbooks published by the Turkish Ministry of Education were analyzed with respect to pronunciation. The quantitative content analysis of 11 textbooks (second-twelfth grades) revealed congruent results with the curricula. It was found that there was more suprasegmental than segmental activities and that the pronunciation activities were centered in the secondary school textbooks. It was further observed that the activities were mainly of a description and analysis nature according to Celce-Murcia et al.’s (2010) framework, implying that learners are provided with insufficient communicative pronunciation activities. This contradicts the curricular objectives aiming for communicative competence for which pronunciation plays an essential role. The study concludes that the content of English textbooks should be re-evaluated concerning communicative pronunciation activities.