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

Abstract

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 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.