Browsing by Author "Rannisto, Susanna"

The aim of this thesis is to examine and compare tasks in textbooks meant for upper secondary school students and adult learners in liberal adult education. The study provides an analysis of all tasks in the analyzed books and then a more detailed analysis of the vocabulary tasks. This focus on vocabulary tasks was chosen due to their importance in vocabulary learning and their high frequency within the analyzed material in comparison to other task types. The data consists of six textbooks from two series, and altogether the books contain over 1400 tasks. New Insights is a textbook series meant for upper secondary schools, and Stepping Stones is meant for adult education. The tasks were analyzed using a data-driven categorization. The tasks were examined and similarities as well as differences between the tasks were found. Based on these similarities and differences, 12 task categories were formed. In addition to the task categories, the expected output of students as well as the focus of the tasks (meaning versus form) were analyzed. The vocabulary tasks were analyzed similarly, and 13 vocabulary task categories were formed. The analysis is mostly quantitative, but some qualitative observations are also presented. The analysis found that both series provide a wide range of different task types, but New Insights has more diversity in comparison to Stepping Stones as the series has tasks in all 12 categories, whereas Stepping Stones only has tasks in 10 categories. Additionally, the tasks were more equally divided between different categories in New Insights, and there was more variation in the output expected of students. In terms of vocabulary tasks, both series provide variation, but in different ways. In Stepping Stones, vocabulary tasks are divided more equally, i.e., the same types of vocabulary tasks appear less frequently, whereas New Insights has tasks in more vocabulary task types. New Insights also has more variation in the expected output of students in the vocabulary tasks.