Abstract:

The current research was projected to scrutinize the newly revised teaching programmes for the English as a foreign language (EFL) course (2017) that is offered as the compulsory parts of primary and secondary education in Turkey. It exclusively compared the two programmes through an analysis of the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) based on SOLO taxonomy to see whether they correspond to lower or higher order skills in primary and secondary education, and to see whether the programmes significantly differ in this concern. The ILOs in EFL teaching programmes for 4th to 8th grades in primary education, and from 9th to 12th grades in secondary education were analysed through document analysis method, and categorised into four levels of the taxonomy: (i) uni-structural, (ii) multi-structural, (iii) relational, and (iv) extended abstract. The findings displayed that the ILOs were prepared mostly at uni-structural and multi-structural levels especially in primary EFL education, and that they began to be replaced by multi-structural and relational ILOs, respectively in secondary education. Apparently, they were extensively designed to address students’ lower- rather than higher-order cognitive skills. The findings, by and large, indicated that the primary EFL ILOs comply with the general objective of the teaching programme (A2 proficiency level in English), and core competencies identified for each grade whereas a clear mismatch was found between the objective of secondary EFL programme (B2 proficiency level in English) and the ILOs identified in the programme. Accordingly, the study suggests a couple of practical implications on EFL curriculum design, and concludes with a few suggestions for further directions.

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