Analyzing the Vocabulary Tasks of Persian Writing Textbooks Used at Primary Schools (4th, 5th, and 6th Grades) Based on Lexical Knowledge

This paper attempted to study the vocabulary tasks of Persian writing textbooks used at primary schools (4th, 5th and 6th grades) based on lexical knowledge taxonomy. The research method of this paper is descriptive-analytic. At first, the vocabulary tasks of Persian writing textbooks were accounted and they were classified according to the taxonomy. The data has been analyzed by using SPSS. Results from the codification of explicit vocabulary tasks showed that the majority of vocabulary tasks in the writing textbooks have been allocated to the writing form aspect but the frequency of other aspects of vocabulary knowledge such as collocation is very low. In addition, allocating 80 percent of explicit vocabulary tasks to receptive tasks in comparison to only 20 percent of productive tasks shows that vocabulary task designing is unbalanced in the textbooks. However, these books have been designed to teach the writing skill which is a productive skill. The results of analytical statistics indicate that there is not a significant difference between different aspects of vocabulary knowledge in the textbooks, but the difference between the two kinds of vocabulary tasks in these books is significant. It is proposed that the vocabulary tasks of the textbooks should be corpus-based. In addition, different aspects of vocabulary knowledge should be realized in different kinds of textbooks’ vocabulary tasks to be exposed repeatedly by the students. Because repetition is an important factor in learning vocabulary. The findings of this study can be useful both to textbook designers and teachers.