抄録
The new Course of Study, which was revised in 2008, promotes balanced
allocation of four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in designing
lessons, and addresses an important role of grammar which is assumed to
underpin communication activities. This study has compared the
communication tasks in new and old textbooks published by three major
bookmakers to investigate changes caused by the revision of the Course of Study.
Following Usuda et al. (2009), this study used the criteria of task-likeliness:
interactional requirement of pair or group work, focus on message, requirement
of outcome, explicitness of task goal, and authenticity (Willis & Willis, 2007).
The results showed the new textbooks of all three publishers required less
interaction in pair or group work, but that the new textbooks of the two
publishers stated the task goal more explicitly. This reflects the tendency that
the activities in the new textbooks are more form-oriented, which consequently
lessens interactional requirement. However, this trend is backed up by balanced
distribution of four skills, which leads to a communication task followed by the
writing task in which the students are in many cases told to sum up what they
talked in the communication task.
