READING AND WRITING IN FOCUS: ANALYZING THE 9TH GRADE ENGLISH COURSEBOOK IN TÜRKİYE WITH THE WHOLE LANGUAGE APPROACH

Abstract

UNESCO has taken rigorous steps to improve literacy worldwide, resulting in increased literacy rates over the past 50 years. However, there are still 754 million illiterate adults globally, most of whom are women. To address this issue, educators and teaching practitioners need to adopt innovative approaches to enhance literacy in daily life. Literacy skills are fundamental for personal, social, and economic development, serving as the foundation for effective communication and informed decision-making. They empower individuals to engage in lifelong learning, enhancing critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. In educational contexts, strong literacy skills are crucial for success across subjects, facilitating advanced learning and better academic performance. By combining Goodman’s insights on the whole language approach with global efforts to improve literacy, we can better understand the importance of innovative, research-based strategies in promoting literacy education and addressing ongoing challenges. This study aims to analyze the “Studying Abroad” unit in the 9th-grade English textbook prepared by the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Türkiye within the context of Whole Language Approach. The data were collected using the document analysis technique, which is a qualitative research method. As current data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) indicate, we must continue our efforts to ensure that adults and young people achieve the necessary literacy and numeracy skills by 2030. Within the scope of this study, the content of the textbook, primarily reading and writing exercises, was analyzed based on Goodman’s Whole Language Approach. The results show that this textbook contains several activities that align well with applying language in real-life and various social contexts. However, there are suggestions for improvements to make the coursebook more engaging, adaptive, and responsive to learners’ needs.