Communicative Learning in Teaching Materials : A Study of Speaking Tasksin Contemporary Grade-8 EnglishTextbooks in China and Sweden

Abstract: Currently, Communicative Language Teaching has been popular around the world andhas a profound effect on second language acquisition since the 1970s. ForCommunicative Language Teaching to be successful, there is a need for appropriateteaching materials.This paper analyzes speaking tasks in Chinese and Swedish textbooks for grade 8，Gofor it and Magic. The analysis presents content analysis, providing a general overviewof speaking tasks found in both textbooks. First, task description is analyzed, whichprovides the pupils with the topics of tasks in both textbooks. It will be seen if thetopics are real-life. Second, types of speaking, text type, cognitive processes, focus,classroom organization are quantitively analyzed to see if there are differentapproaches to Communicative Language Teaching between Chinese and Swedishtextbooks.Through comparison of these six aspects in different textbooks, there are three similarapproaches to Communicative Language Teaching: First, they both have real-worldtopics under which there are many real-world speaking tasks. Second, the dialoguesplay a main role in both textbooks. Third, pair and group work have dominantposition in these two books.Also there are three different approaches to Communicative Language Teaching: First,the Chinese textbook is directed towards accuracy while the Swedish textbook isdirected towards fluency. Second, the Chinese textbook focuses on form whereas theSwedish textbook focuses on meaning. Third, there is an information-gap approach inthe Chinese textbook where tasks based on information gap are obviously labeled.However, it cannot be found in the Swedish textbook.