An Analysis Of A Secondary School Efl Reading Curriculum: Types Of Reading Tasks

Abstract

One of the goals of the Malaysian lower secondary EFL curriculum is to prepare students for EFL reading at a higher level of education. In line with this goal, the purpose of the current study was to examine the design of reading tasks in terms of the types with regards to reading in academic areas at the tertiary level. The study was conducted in the Malaysian setting at the secondary school level. The data for the study were collected by reviewing curriculum documents such as the Malaysian Form Three English Language Curriculum Specifications and the Form Three English language textbook. Reading tasks extracted from the curriculum documents were coded using Anderson et al.'s (1991) three major reading task types and an additional category for reading tasks that do not fall into the three major reading task categories. The data for this study were analyzed using manifest content analysis. In terms of preparing students for academic reading in English at the tertiary level, the reading task types in the selected curriculum seems to include training students on major reading task types such as identifying main, ideas, identifying details and making inference. However, statistically, the findings show that the provision for the major task types is much lower than the provision in training students on other skills such as fluency. Such finding has implications on the effectiveness of the curriculum at the instructional implementation level. Hence, based on the findings of this study, there is a need for a curriculum revision in order to achieve the respective curriculum goal.