The Algerian Middle School Writing Syllabus and its Implementation: A Case Study of some Teachers of Tizi-Ouzou.

Abstract

The following magister dissertation seeks to analyse the instructional writing plan as laid down in the Algerian Middle School syllabuses and as implemented inn the textbooks and delivered in the classroom. Accordingly, it has resorted to the evaluation of the writing syllabuses, the four Middle School course books and the teacher practice of the skills. To this end, we have appealed to the process theory of learning writing skills and strategies, textbook evaluation, classroom observation and the questionnaire technique. The aim behind the research is the evaluation of the instructional plan motivated by the rather weak results that brevet students obtained in English in 2007 and 2008. The writing skill being the medium through which students show their real competencies, in these exams, we have tried to examine and evaluate it in order to sort out the weaknesses and strengths in the instructional plan related to this skill. Our dissertation consists of two parts, divided into three parts each. One part is theoretical and the other is practical. In the theoretical part, we made a review of the literature where we have showed that writing theories have gradually moved to the recommendation of teaching writing as a process rather a product. In the second part, we have analysed in this order the syllabuses, the textbooks and the teacher practice. On the whole, we have concluded that the instructional plan related to the writing syllabuses, the textbooks and teacher practice contain positive points, but the idea of process is not sufficiently fleshed out in its three components. The syllabuses and the textbooks are basically task-based, but the tasks are mostly of the pedagogic type; the sequencing of the skills is too systematic and gives primacy to the spoken skills without regard to the students’ needs in terms of taking the Brevet Exam. The teacher profile is not taken into account since no teacher development syllabus is included in the syllabuses proper or in the textbooks. The whole impression is that of putting old wine into new bottles.