Textual Typologies, Genres, and Cognitive Processes in Writing Tasks of L1 Spanish Language Textbooks: How do Textbooks Enact the Official Curriculum?

Abstract

New Spanish laws have shown an increasing interest in promoting writing skills so that secondary school students can express themselves in a wide variety of contexts and registers. Nevertheless, it is not clear how textbooks implement the recommendations of the official curriculum. This study analyses 220 writing tasks presented in three L1 Spanish textbooks, addressed to 15-16-year-old students, to examine how textbooks enact the curriculum. In order to achieve this goal, a template was designed to verify each task: the presence of genres and textual typologies, the description of the discursive context provided, and the cognitive processes involved (planning, translation and reviewing). Results reveal that genres are far from being the focal point of the teaching units, while argumentative typology is the most frequent one. Despite the evident effort made by publishing houses to include planning activities in writing tasks, the reviewing process is still relegated to a third place.