An Investigation of the Frequency and Type of Textual Themes in Secondary School English Language Textbooks in Iran on the Basis of Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG)

Abstract

In recent years, a major shift has been observed in English language textbooks in all grades, especially in secondary school in Iran. It seems that the inappropriateness of the previous syllabus has led the material developers to make content and structural changes in the new books; therefore, it is expected that in the writing of new books, different scientific views be taken into consideration and aligned with the scientific theories of the day. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the secondary school’s English language textbooks in Iran based on the textual metafunction of Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG) and to specify the frequency and type of textual themes in the texts of the new books. For this purpose, 301 clauses in reading parts of the secondary school’s English language textbooks were analyzed. The results of the analysis showed that the authors of these books are familiar with these concepts; that is, these components have been taken into account in many cases in terms of the choice of reading texts in terms of type and number of themes and the number of simple and compound clauses; but, in some cases, they have not paid careful attention to the distribution of the components, especially in the lesson to lessons distribution, considering their respective educational bases. It is hoped that the weaknesses identified in this study be considered in the new editions of the aforementioned books.

Keywords

• systematic functional grammar
• textual metafunction
• textual theme
• english language textbooks