Content Analysis of English Activity Books for the First Three Iraqi Primary Stages

A content analysis of the activity books for the first three Iraqi primary stages has been conducted to determine which thinking skills are addressed in each book and what distributions they follow. A taxonomy of basic thinking skills has been designed to be the tool of analysis. Observation, comprehension, encoding, remembering, and organization are proposed as the lower level skills, while the higher level integrates classification, comparison, application, query, and problem identification. The labels lower and higher imply the skills' functionality rather than their inferiority or superiority in comparison to each other. Lower level skills are seen as a base for others, and they involve simpler mental efforts as compared to those in the higher order level. The analysis proves the availability of all the skills in the proposed taxonomy and manifests that their diverse distributions are in harmony with their functional roles as either bases or boosters for other thinking skills.


Introduction
Learning a language goes beyond the memorization of its vocabulary and grammatical rules.It is essential for the EFL learners who tend to acquire another language to develop modes of thinking similar to those of the natives, as Language is a cognitive system that mirrors its native's thinking.Hadi (2017a) stated that some EFL learners fail to get native-like conceptual thinking due to lack of cognitive competence which results in poor performance in the target language.However, this gap can be filled by training the learners' cognitive skills through the teaching material in their textbooks.These books often involve the students' books which focus on presenting the world through the target language lenses, while the activity books enable learners to exercise the encoding and decoding of the new knowledge they got from their books; adding the new cognitive system of the target language to their mental repertoire.Realizing the importance of training the basic cognitive skills of EFL learners through activity books, the researchers aim to identify the basic thinking skills addressed in the content of the activity books "English for Iraq" for the first three primary stages by Etherton, Sally, and MacBurine 2016; which are the latest syllabuses designed for these stages and are still in use in Iraqi schools.The analysis of the activity book for the 3 rd primary has already been published by Hadi et al. (2018), and this paper intends to widen the sample of analysis by including the activity books for the two earlier stages in addition to this one in an attempt to infer more comprehensive conclusions related to the three samples of analysis.Berelson (1952) proposed the use of content analysis as a research type that allows a quantitative description of the content of some data in an objective and systematic manner.Researchers like Holsti (1968), WeberV (1990), and Neuendorf (2002) stated that this method allows for analyzing the content of messages from a set of data and discriminating their features by measuring the relevant content variables and making inferences about them.Abbot and Monsen (1979) defined content analysis as a datagathering technique that involves categorizing qualitative information to derive quantitative measurement scales of various degrees of complexity.Content analysis is both a quantitative and a qualitative research tool.The qualitative analysis involves both a description of the obviously visible content (manifest analysis) and an analysis of the latent level, which demands an interpretation of the underlying meaning of the content (Woodrum (1984); Erdener and Dunn(1990 ); Downe-Wambolt (1992); Berg, (2001)).The analysis of explicit and hidden levels is sensitive to the role of their related context in dealing with the symbolic meanings and analyzing potential messages (Stempel, 1989).The quantitative method allows for summarizing facts in a form of frequencies that are shown as percentages or numbers of kinds of variables (Neuendorf ,2002), (Krippendorff ,2004).It is a deductive method whose aim is to answer questions depending on previous theoretical or empirical research work; it differs from the qualitative analysis, which is inductive in that it makes inferences from the investigation of themes and topics (Sándorová, 2014).

Literature Review
The content analysis encompasses six components.The first four components, called data making, involve utilizing, sampling, recording and coding, and reducing data.The two other components are abductive inference of contextual phenomenon and narration.Utilizing data means categorizing the content under consideration into analytic units depending on the purpose of analysis.These units can be sampling units, measuring units, reading units, enumeration units, context units, etc. .The focus of utilizing is on units rather than the relations between them ( Krippendorff,2004).
Sampling means taking a representative model of all the categories of analytic units from the whole population of observations.The recording and coding component uncovers the relationship between an observation and its situational interpretation, reproducing that observation in the form of an analytic unit.For example, an analyst can record some words uttered in a particular situation at different points in time and compare their connotations across time to infer the influence of cultural, political, or social factors on their semantics (ibid).
Reducing data incorporates establishing a statistical representation of data to get as accurate inferences as possible about them.Abductive inference refers to the best entailments that can be obtained from the observed data in light of the analysis conducted by the analyst and his interpretation of these observations.Narration means recounting answers to the analyst's questions through arguing, explaining the importance of the outcomes, or indicating how the obtained results contribute to the relevant fields.The sequence of these components is determined by the analyst due to the requirements of analysis and there is no rigid rule for their arrangement (ibid).Actually, the subjective judgment of the analyst is restricted by these scientific procedures, which can fulfill a reliable level of objectivity.Subjectivity as a property of content analysis (Holsti 1968, Prasad2008, Hsieh and Shannon2005) arises from the nature of its twofold procedure which engages description and prediction.While the description is not a deep analysis of data but an analyst's presentation of frequencies or percentages of results of the analyzed content (Dinçer,2018), the prediction fold involves making inferences as the analyst measures the features relevant to content messages of the processed data (Neuendrof, 2002).Since the subjective role of the analyst in describing the content components, interpreting data, and making inferences about their features all follow systematic and scientific methodology, content analysis is thus foregrounded as a method that enables understanding the various phenomena scientifically (Zhang and Wildemuth,2009).
Accordingly, the essential principles of scientific analysis are available in the content analysis method represented by objectivity (conducting analysis through adopting specific scientific rules which can lead to similar results when applied to the same samples), systematism (the inclusion or exclusion of content is decided by rules which eliminate the possibility of bias to personal opinions), and generalizability (the possibility to apply the results of the analysis to similar situations).(Prasa, 2008).
The nature of content analysis makes it an effective tool for investigating the multiple components of Educational English Textbooks and activity books which are more than just authentic language material but also cognitive training substances.Davison (2006) stated that one of the invisible content components of English as a course subject involves teaching learners thinking, doing, and feeling in English as course material and in an English-speaking community in general.Based on the proposition that EFL teaching materials are not mere language knowledge supplements but a trainer of EFL Learners' thinking skills on the cognitive level, this study aims at analyzing the content of samples of English activity books that are designed for Iraqi EFL learners.The focus is on the three activity books for the first three primary stages, as these stages represent the base on which the advanced stages are built.

Research Questions
Activity books can be the only tool available to a wide range of young EFL learners to practise their knowledge of the target language and to allow them an entrance interaction in the new world of that language.They provide knowledge, language skills, and thinking skills.The latter can be the most invisible content which is interrelated to and inseparable from all the details of the language learning process.Thus this study focuses on this content component by attempting to answer these questions: 1. What basic thinking skills are included in the English activity books for the first three primary stages?
2. What distributions do the available skills follow in each of the three books under consideration?

Theoretical Background 4.1. Importance of Content Knowledge
The content of a subject to be taught is tightly related to the pedagogical ways of presenting it to students.That content determines the teacher's explanation, instructions, questions, and ways of approaching the learners' mentalities.This notion had been brought into focus by Shulman, who defined pedagogical content knowledge as "the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others . . .[It] also includes an understanding of what makes the learning of specific concepts easy or difficult, the conceptions and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring with them to the learning" (Shulman,1986: 9).Shulman (1987) stated that the contents of subject matters and ways of presenting them are inseparable and that their blending serves the understanding of the way topics, issues, or problems are arranged, represented, and adjusted in response to the diversity of learners' abilities and interests.Actually, the impact of content knowledge of subject matters on pedagogical content knowledge is re-emphasized by Gudmundsdottir and Shulman (1987), who declared that the former is essential for realizing the optimum sequence of presenting topics, concepts, or certain points within a subject matter.Berry et al. agreed with this notion viewing that the blend of understanding the content to be taught and the suitable teachers' pedagogy can positively affect teaching and "best engender students' learning for understanding" (2008:1272).
As much of the literature in content based language teaching proposed that content and language are inseparable and that their association is a "pedagogic necessity for language learning" (Creese,2005:188), having knowledge about thinking skills as a latent content component, their kinds of and distribution in the course material has been an educational need.Concerning the supplemental material represented by activity books, the instructional language within their contextual settings can address some particular thinking skills (rather than others).Thus familiarizing teachers with the skills activated by that language and the conceptual hierarchy of their occurrence in each stage of the course material can be a condition for a successful educational process.Teachers need to identify the functions of the instructional language underlying the teaching content for a particular stage (Lucero, 2012) and to have knowledge of the mental skills activated by that language to make optimum use of their pedagogies.
Thinking, which is an implicit behavior that utilizes symbols and ideas in the mental processing of various forms of information in different domains of individuals' experiences, can be simulated through images, symbols and signs, language, mental functions, concepts (Manivannan, 2010), and all of these elements are inserted under different topics in the English textbooks to prompt learners' thinking skills via the target language.
Since learning a foreign language is a multi-skill building process that goes on for years, it is expected that the latent relevant skills addressed through the language teaching materials are distributed in accordance with the learners' mental capacities, psychological readiness, and kind and amount of knowledge they need for communication in contexts they are expected to be involved in.Language is a system of making meanings where an item may have multiple senses according to its various contexts of occurrence (Schleppegrell, 2020), hence teaching how to encode the concrete meanings in a target language through activating perceptual thinking can be a constructive starting point during the early stages of the learning process.Accordingly, topics such as parts of the body, fruits, family members, numbers, etc., are heavily addressed in those stages as learners of early ages are attracted to concrete things within their domain of realization and their world of interaction.Moreover, these topics can activate their perceptual thinking, which is described by Wu (2015) as the base for other kinds of thinking which can be taught and trained in the more advanced levels of the foreign learning process.

Thinking as Teachable Cognitive Skills
Thinking is an umbrella concept that encompasses the innate mental mechanisms that all people have but with various levels of utilization depending on the types of individuals' needs in their environments.It involves a series of mental skills that can be improved through exercising and practising.De Bono (1976) viewed that thinking is not an innate discrete mental ability.Rather, it can be improved in interactive contexts in light of the needs that arise.Drawing on the definition of a skill as "a way of carrying out a type of task" (Winch,2010:89), thinking skills can be defined as the set of mental ways of processing the world of individuals to achieve certain tasks in response to those individuals' interactive needs.Fisher (1990) stated that thinking skills are teachable, just like physical skills, linguistic skills, social skills, etc. Actually, each of the latter skills has its relevant context where it can be taught and improved.While every single detail in the world serves as an input to human thinking, many researchers (Resnick and Klopfer (1989); Pressley and Harris (1990); Bandura (1997); Beyer (2008), Suryana and Yulia (2021)) recommended employing the academic subject matters as the optimum setting for improving learners' thinking.
Teaching some particular thinking skills through subject matter courses will help in building other associated skills which can be relevant to subjects other than the ones of the designed pedagogical texts; some of which can be of increasing complexity and thus turn out to be more general in their application (Winch, 2010).Accordingly, some skills can be seen as basic in the sense that all humans are equipped with, and they can act as the background for the more advanced thinking skills.
Depending on the functionality of skills, this study proposed observation, comprehension, encoding, remembering, and organization as the lower level of basic thinking skills, while classification, comparison, application, query, and problem identification are integrated within the higher level.The labels lower and higher levels are not intended to indicate a rank or superiority.They reflect the notion that low order skills involve simpler mental action in comparison to those of the higher level where more complicated mental processing of information is required.

Method
The content analysis method is employed to analyze the content of three English activity books for the Iraqi 1 st , 2 nd, and 3rd primary stages using a taxonomy designed for this purpose.To get accurate analysis results, a mixed qualitative-quantitative method is used to analyze these books in terms of a latent level component represented by basic thinking skills.

Sample of Analysis
The analysis in this study covers three activity books which are 'English for Iraq 1 st Primary', 'English for Iraq 2 nd Primary' and 'English for Iraq 3 rd Primary' by Quintana, Jenny, O'Neil, Helen, and MacBurnie (2015).All the exercises in each book are analyzed.Table (1) summarizes the population and the sample of analysis.

Instrument
The researchers designed a taxonomy of basic thinking skills to investigate them in the English activity books for the first three primary stages.The taxonomy was reviewed by some experts in the field of education to check its suitability as a tool of analysis.
The experts' responses regarding the suitability or unsuitability of the taxonomy items for the purpose of the study were statistically calculated by using the Chi-square equation to measure its validity as a research tool (see Appendix A), and the experts' modifications led to the final pattern of the taxonomy as illustrated in Appendix B.

Procedures
Krippendroff (2004) proposed that the identification of context units requires the analysis of all the information relevant to the text to be analyzed.Accordingly, the researchers reviewed the content of the activity books to identify the subject matters they handle and their relevance to each of the basic thinking skills in the designed taxonomy.The taxonomy functioned as the code book, which involved the explanation of every variable(i.e., thinking skill), while the definition of each skill represented the code form adopted by the researchers to determine which skill is addressed in each activity.The collected data were categorized into code sheets according to the adopted coding scheme, and the obtained data were transformed into a statistical form by calculating the frequencies of every thinking skill.This enables the researchers to draw inferences that help in understanding the prospective results and conclusions.White and Marsh (2006) stated that having a coding scheme with explicit definitions, obvious instructions, and examples is essential to achieve reliability by allowing the coding and recoding of the same item at several different times.
The researchers thus utilized this feature of a coding scheme to check the consistency of the coder's processing of data in the coding process by analyzing a random sample of about 10% of the total number of the activities of a book sample with a two-week interval.The same sample was analyzed by another analyst at different points in time.According to De Bruin (2010), reliability is available if the results obtained by different analysts are consistent when the analysis is conducted under the same conditions.Ratings of reliability are shown in the table below:

Table (2): Ratings of Reliability
A difference in the result of the analysis is expectable as it involves a subjective interpretation by the analysts.However, proponents of the quantitative method stated that a value of 80% or higher is said to be a sign of reliability (Gavora, 2015).Accordingly, our tool of analysis is highly reliable, as proved by the statistical values in Table (2)

Results
Table (3) below shows the statistical distributions of basic thinking skills in the samples of analysis.Clearly, the outcomes of the analysis answer the research's first question, which reads: 'what skills are included in each activity book?Actually, all the basic thinking skills of the designed taxonomy are available in the books that have been analyzed in this study:

N Type of Agreement Method of checking consistency Constancy 1
The researchers' statistical results at some point in time, with their results at some other points of time.
Inter-rater statistical method (The same researchers after three weeks).

2
The researchers' statistical results with those gotten by other analyst ( 1) Inter-rater statistical method; Equivalence between the researcher and another analyst.

Basic Thinking Skills
The results of analysis of the activity book for 1 st primary stage The results of analysis of the activity book for 2 nd primary stage The results of analysis of the activity book for 3 rd primary stage (adopted from The results reflect divergent distributions of these skills in the three books, which answers the paper's second question 'what distributions do these skills follow in each book?".Observation (28.25%), (26.49%),(28.54)and remembering (17.28), (15.19), (18.69) occupy the highest percentages among all the other lower level skills in the three books; The second highest percentage is occupied by encoding (8.94%) and comprehension (7.52 ) for the 1 st primary, comprehension (7.11% )and organization (5.49%)for the 2 nd primary, and organization (12.94%) and encoding(4.93%)for the 3 rd primary.The lowest occurrence of skills is recorded for the organization (1.63%) in the activity book for the 1 st primary, encoding (4.85%) for the 2nd primary, and comprehension (0.62%) for the 3rd primary.
As for the higher level thinking skills, the application skill records the highest percentage in each of the three books; about 33%, 37%, and 30%, respectively.Query, as the second highest percentage in the two samples of this study, does not go much higher than 1% in each book.However, query shares this rank with the skill of classification in the distribution for the 3 rd primary sample, with (1.23%) for each.Classification and comparison are the lowest (0.61% for each) in 1 st primary activity book, while problem identification and comparison are the lowest in the 2 nd and the 3 rd primary; 0.48%, 0.4%, and 0.65%, 0.62%, respectively.

Discussion of the Results
Language is a system of encoding individuals' interactional experience in their environment (Hadi,2017b), and people cannot communicate with or about things out of their experiential existence as their mental repertoire is a representation of their various levels of knowledge of their world.This fact justifies the highest percentage of the application skill among all other skills in the three activity books that have been analyzed.Application means learning by doing which involves pushing the English language to the learner's environment through tasks they have to perform.Thus, it sets the learners' observation free in the new system of communication represented by the English language and roots its details in their minds to be processed and retrieved whenever needed.The ranking of application, observation, and remembering as the first, the second, and the third most frequently addressed skills in the samples of analysis can be a reflection of the natural sequence according to which these activities are prompted in the experiential world.
Encoding in the activity book for the 1st primary, which is about a double of its percentages in the books for the 2 nd and 3 rd primary, can be intended to supply learners with as much data in the target language as possible; allowing them to modify their mental map in light of the new input they have and preparing a background for other skills.Similarly, encoding in the other two stages serves the purpose of boosting other skills like comprehension and organization and enabling the learners of further mental updating in light of the newly introduced skills.
Comprehension and organization go against each other's trends in their distribution.While the percentage of comprehension decreases towards the more advanced level (i.e., 3 rd primary), that of organization increases.This opposite trend in distribution across the three books can be purposefully intentional to set more space for other skills through engaging learners in various tasks relevant to a wider range of skills, including organization.

N
The Classification and comparison, though they receive the same emphasis in the book for the 1 st primary, have slightly higher percentages in the books for the 2 nd and 3 rd stages.However, classification has a heavier weight than comparison in these two samples.This is determined by the cognitive activity involved in each skill.Classification is the ability to put things into categories, while comparison is the ability to find similarities and differences between items belonging to various categories.Classification, then, is a prerequisite for comparison, as learners cannot compare items without being aware of the categories they belong to.It is also noticed that the query skill for all three activity books revolves around 1% while the problem identification skill records less and fewer percentages with the more advanced stages.However, the percentage of problem identification skills is lower than its counterpart of query in all three books as the former is a conceptual prerequisite for the latter.These two skills are addressed in the simplest manner by asking the learners a direct question, "what is this?" to activate their minds to wonder about several related elements and follow a certain scheme to get the final step of identification.
Divergence in skills distribution is both logical and purposeful.It is logical as it goes in line with the hierarchy of the learners' mental abilities and their functional conceptual system.It is also purposeful in that it takes into consideration whether the particular skill is intended to be a background or a booster for other skills.

Conclusion
The content of activities in the samples of analysis proves to be a multi-layer.The surface layer is the linguistic form of the instruction, and the deep layer is the set of skills activated by that instruction.The activation of a particular skill is highly dependent on both the linguistic context of the instruction and the contextual elements attached to it.It is found that a step-by-step insertion of the basic thinking skills has been adopted within an integrative frame through which one skill is built on the already trained skills.This serves the gradual practice of the learners' brains to makes them more flexible to receive more training.
Actually, foregrounding one skill does not entail the absence of other skills.While one skill is brought on stage, other relevant skills are present in the background taking their role in the revival of the foregrounded skill.Thus, it is found that some skills are prompted as founders for other skills serving as a basis on which other skills are built.For example, observation grounds for all other skills, remembering grounds for organization, etc.Some skills function as boosters that enhance skills that have already been trained; for instance, application boosts both encoding and remembering.
In brief, the divergent distribution of the basic thinking skills in the analyzed samples is functional and respondent to both the conceptual relation between the skills on the cognitive level and the mental training that the learners need to familiarize themselves with the new language system.and minds understand.This skill aims to put the information into the memory system to store it in our minds.

4-Remembering Skill:
The ability to retrieve relevant information from memory.To remember successfully depends on a successful match between the information encoded at the time of learning and the information that is available at the time of recalling.This skill aims to recall the information from the memory system.

5-Organization
Skill: It aims to put items, values, objects, and vocabulary in a suitable sequence according to a specific system or a particular rule.
The significance The Higher Level: Notes Not suitable Suitable It includes skills that demand more complex mental processes to be performed in comparison to those required by skills at the lower level.

1-Classification Skill:
The ability to sort objects, vocabulary, and events into groups based on particular properties and interrelationships.This skill aims to ensure that the learners put the objects and events in correct groups to help them avoid any ambiguity in the process of attributing things to a category in the learning activities.

2-Comparison Skill:
The ability to differentiate between two objects or more based on similarities and differences between them.This skill aims to reveal correspondences between ideas or objects.

3-Application Skill:
The ability to use what has been already learned in various situations and learning tasks.This skill aims to apply educational procedures to a familiar or unfamiliar task and use acquired knowledge, facts, and techniques in different or new learning situations.
4-Query Skill: The ability to generate many relevant questions about a specific subject and explore the information through investigation and thrilling questions.

5-Problem's Identification:
The ability to describe problems and define specifications regarding them.This skill aims to clarify confusing and exciting situations by directing more attention to them.