UPDATING THE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK UPSWING ENGLISH IN LINE WITH THE ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACH

Abstract

One of the most problematic issues in the ELT textbooks used in public secondary schools in Turkey is their inability to reflect in active practice the principles of the action-oriented approach, which the Turkish ELT curriculum for the primary and secondary schools claims to have adopted. The textbooks, thus, are inefficient, not to mention inadequate, to train social actors, which is a goal set by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This paper critically analyses the so-called project at the end of unit 10 in the English textbook Upswing English used in the eighth grades of public secondary schools in Turkey in terms of the action-oriented approach and concludes that the so-called project does not reflect the characteristics of pedagogical projects. The only function of the so-called project is to allow the students to reuse the language content of the unit. Thus, the textbook displays the characteristics of the communicative approach rather than the action-oriented approach. Ultimately, an alternative mini-project design is suggested for unit 10 of the English textbook Upswing English to make the textbook more compatible and consistent with the principles of the action-oriented approach