The effect of the Algerian secondary school EFL coursebooks on developing learners' critical thinking.

Abstract

The present study tackles the teaching of English in the Algerian secondary school from a critical thinking angle. A qualitative method is followed to analyze the teaching contents of three coursebooks: ""At the Crossroads"" (First year level), ""Getting Through"" (Second year level) and ""New Prospects"" (Third year level) to find out whether they are designed toward developing learners' critical thinking or not. The study is also based on a teacher's questionnaire answered by 76 EFL teachers, and an analysis of 61 teaching sessions attended with 11 secondary school teachers in the Wilaya of Oum El Bouaghi. The results of the three data collection methods were complementary and they all demonstrated that the two coursebooks ""At the crossroads"" and ""Getting Through"" were designed with the aim of developing the learners' linguistic resources and communicative abilities than on enhancing their critical thinking skills. The teaching contents presented through the listening scripts, reading texts, instructional statements, tasks, questions and pictures do not reflect even the very few higher-order-skills referred to in the statements of objectives as outlined in the syllabi. Only the analysis of the third year textbook, ""New Prospects"", exhibited the teaching of a number of critical thinking skills, namely developing arguments and counter-arguments; justifying opinion using reasons, arguments and analogy; analyzing and evaluating arguments; comparing and contrasting; tolerating different views; deducing and inferring; note-taking, note-making and many others to name few. Teachers' in-class practices relied mostly on the instructions in the three coursebooks, but they did not show a systematic teaching of critical thinking skills. There was a general tendency to concentrate on the correct use of language even in the lessons that teach language skills. Little adaptation of the coursebooks lessons was observed. Even in the few cases when it occurred, there was a major focus on the direct teaching of language forms but not the thinking skills. These results required redesigning lessons from the two coursebooks ""At the Crossroads"" and ""Getting Through"" as a model to help in integrating a systematic teaching of critical thinking in the Algerian EFL class.