An Alternative Mini-project Design Proposal for the English Textbook Mastermind

Abstract

Training of a social actor as a new goal set by the CEFR necessitates a transition from the communicative approach to the action-oriented approach, a transition from training successful communicators to training social actors. Communicative textbooks, mostly, employ situations of communication (e.g. simulations, role-plays) at the end of the units, whose function is to allow the learners to reuse the language content of the unit or to enable them to make free production. A textbook prepared in accordance with the action-oriented approach, however, does not offer communication situations at the end of the unit but mini-projects, whose ultimate aim is to train social actors. This paper aims to evaluate the English textbook Mastermind used in the 8th grades of public secondary schools in Turkey in terms of the action-oriented approach. For this purpose, the characteristics of the assignment in unit 3 of the textbook Mastermind are analysed. It is argued that the function of the analysed assignment is to reuse the language content of the unit and it remains only as a pretext for communication. Thus, the textbook is communicative rather than action-oriented. For this reason, an alternative mini-project design is proposed to show how to make this textbook action-oriented.