A Content Analysis of the Elementary School Farsi Reading and Writing Textbooks From Frame Semantics’ Point of View

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
M. S. Fayyazi 1
H. Safi Pirloojeh 2
1 Assistant Professor of University of Guilan
2 Assistant Professor of Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies
Abstract
Aim

The textbook as the most important educational tool in the country has a significant role in the curriculum content. Therefore, textbook revision, adding to conceptual richness and avoiding their shortcomings are the main necessities of continuous textbook content analysis. The present article aims at determining the degree of attention of elementary Farsi Reading and Farsi Writing textbooks in Iran to different meanings of a semantic frame.

Questions

The article tries to answer the following questions: ‘in the elementary school Farsi Reading and Farsi Writing textbooks which kind of explicit, collocational, associative, stylistic, grammatical, pragmatic, and implicit meanings are thought?’ And ‘How much each type of meanings is come to notice?’

Research Method

Research has carried out by qualitative method. The statistical population of the study includes all the assignments, texts and exercises of the Farsi Reading and Writing textbooks in the primary school curriculum. The assessment has been conducted, through content analysis method particularly Check-list. The Unit of analysis is ‘word’. The evaluation of curriculum has been done on the basis of Fillmore’s Frame Semantics (1975) and the content of the textbooks is analyzed and described based on the amount of usage of various meanings in a semantic frame.

Innovation

The efficacy of parameters taken from cognitive linguistics especially frame semantics and content analysis interacting as a system in this research is more significant than those elements operating separately. This convergence into an interdisciplinary field would culminate in a fresh and penetrating view of parameters related to language and education which would not be realized by delving into any of these disciplines alone.

Conclusion

The findings of the research reveal that in the first-grade Farsi Reading Textbook, 38.7% of meanings are designated to explicit, 51.6% to collocational and 9.7% to associative meanings. In terms of grammatical categories, all the meanings belong to the category of noun. In addition, ten semantic frames are instructed. Regarding the literacy level of students, most of the presented drills to teach explicit meanings are pictorial. Since the unit of study in this research is word, such cases are ignored. No glossary is appended to this textbook. The first-grade Farsi writing Textbook emphasizes the writing exercises.

The semantic frames of the second-grade Farsi Reading Textbook include 70.2% explicit, 10.6% collocational, 14.9% associative and 4.3% stylistic meanings. Among all the Elementary Farsi Reading and Writing Textbook, the second-grade book is the only one which contains four exercises relating to stylistic meaning. The distribution of noun category is 60.6% in comparison with adjective 30.9%, pronoun 4.25% and onomatopoeia 4.25% respectively. No glossary is appended to the second-grade Farsi Reading Textbook. Considering various types of meanings in the Writing Textbook, 70.2% are designated to explicit, 9.6% to collocational and 20.2% to associative meanings. In terms of grammatical category, 66.7% are dedicated to nouns, 26.3% to adjectives, 5.3% to onomatopoeia and1.7% to verbs.

The third-grade Farsi Reading Textbook contains 60.8% explicit, 33.3% collocational and 5.9% associative meaning of which 56.9% are nouns and 43.1% are adjectives. There is no direct indication to any semantic frames, but students have access to a glossary at the appendix. In the third-grade Farsi Writing Textbook, Percentage of distribution of meanings are 78.3% for explicit and 21.7% for associative ones of which 91/3% are dedicated to nouns and 8.7% to adjectives.

In the fourth-grade Farsi Reading Textbook, there is a glossary which gives the explicit meaning of each term. 82.7% exercises are designated to the indirect instruction of explicit and 17.3% to the collocational meanings. In terms of grammatical category, 75.9% are nouns and 24.1% are adjectives. In the fourth-grade Farsi Writing Textbook, the distribution of categories of noun and adjective are equal and each of them has 50% portion. There are no signs of any other meanings like collocational or associative ones.

The fifth-grade Farsi Reading Textbook includes the indirect construction of explicit (88.2%) and collocational (11.8%) meanings. There is a glossary containing 292 terms which introduces explicit meaning. Percentage of distribution of grammatical categories are 41.2% nouns, 44.1% adjectives, 5.9% infinitives, 5.9% prepositions and 2.9% verbs. In the fifth-grade Farsi Writing Textbook, the explicit meaning rate is 67.6%, being higher than collocational and associative by 20.6% and 11.8% respectively. The distribution of nouns and adjectives take up the same portion of total grammatical categories, 50% for each.

In the sixth-grade Farsi Reading Textbook, instruction is at the service of explicit meaning and 100% of which is dedicated to adjectives. The glossary of this book in comparison with other grade textbooks contains more terms, 312 ones. The sixth-grade Farsi Writing Textbook includes 59.2% explicit, 11.1% collocational and 29.7% associative meanings. The ratio of noun to adjective distributions are 51.8% to 48.2%. There is no direct instruction of semantic frame in this textbook.

The content analysis of elementary Farsi Reading and Writing Textbooks from cognitive semantic point of view indicates that the books give the pupils the instruction both directly and indirectly. The students are provided with training of explicit, collocational and associative meanings through reading and writing exercises, the majority of which is dedicated to explicit (67.4%) and the minority to stylistic (0.8%) meanings. Collocational (18.6%) and associative (3.2%) meanings are in between. there is no teaching either directly or indirectly of grammatical, pragmatic, and implicit meanings.

Keywords

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Language Related Research
Volume 11, Issue 4 - Serial Number 58
September and October 2020
Pages 211-240