Analysis of How Gender Relations Have Been Portrayed In Elt Materials for Primary Schools in Addis Ababa and Its Implications for Learners' Performance and Future Career
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Date
2006-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Thi s stud y was designed to examll1e the portrayal o f m a le a nd fem a le
sex es in ELT material s fo r primary schools in Addis Ababa a nd to c h eck
\I·hether there a r c manifestations o f sexism in those textbooks . T o this
end, linguistic a n d no n -ling uistic aspects t ogeth e r with illu strations were
examin ed .
The paper h as two section s : t h e fir st section treats the textual con tents
a nd th e second section explores th e pictoria l ana lysis of the tex tbooks.
Wi th regard to th e textual con t e nt, different lingui stic and n o n -linguis ti c
catego ri es \,· e r e considered. First, a systema tic conte nt analysis was
carried out \\· ith reference to topics and sub-topics, t h e la n gu age use d ,
adjectives u sed with male a nd fema le subjects, and the masculine
ge n e ri c co n struction s . An inquiry was a lso m a d e to see oc c u pational
possibilities, ac ti vit ies, d iscourse r o les g iv e n to the sexes , a n d c h a racte r s
in passages a nd b io g r a phies . In the second section of the paper, the type
of activ itie s and the total numbe r of pictures were iden tifi ed for each sex
by grade level.
Overall results revealed th a t the textbooks portray job possibilities for
females stereotypically. Femal e s are g iven limited job possibili ties
compa red with. their counter p a rts. The re are also some instances of
generic ma sculine l a n guages . Howeve r, other cate go ries r evealed no sex
bias. Finally, these res ul ts suggested that the r e shou ld be a review of
the textbooks for thei r gend e r r epr ese ntation s .
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Keywords
Gender Relations