Analyzing"Our Arabic language Textbooks’’ of the Last Grade of Primary Stage with Reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Objectives

This study is aimed at analyzing the contents of ‘Our Arabic Language’ Textbooks for 4th, 5th, and 6th grades of the primary stage in Jordan, also studying and examining the questions employed in the Textbooks. In this respect the main aim was to examine those questions covered the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. From the main aim five questions arise to be answered.

Referring to the questions, the results of the study showed that the contents of the Textbooks (the scope of the study) was consistent with the general aims of teaching and learning the Arabic Language in the upper grade of the primary stage. The results of the study also indicated that there was an overemphasise on the lower level questions in the textbooks.

The number of questions and their percentages were tending to lower level of Blooms Taxonomy of Cognitive Domains. The number of the questions in ‘Our Arabic Language’ was 1283, distributed to the six levels of ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy. The highest number was knowledge level which were 596 questions with 46.45% of the percentages of the whole levels, whereas the questions of comprehensive were 196 with 15.27%, application 148 with 11.52%, syntheses 125 with 9.74%, analysis 114 with 8.88% and Evaluation at the end of the Taxonomy. The number of the questions devoted to the evaluation was 104 with 8.14%

According to the results, educational processes in teaching Arabic Language in this stage is still in its’ lowest standard. In this case, pupils’ performance will be negatively affected and lose the achievement of higher cognitive tasks. Despite that, the results showed that the outcomes of the contents, general aims and specific objectives were sufficient for pupils’ needs in this stage. The study proved that the taxonomy levels percentages were consistent with the standard percentages as shown in the tables 3, 4 and 5. Again It means that the number of questions and percentages were satisfactory and help the pupils to achieve the specific objectives of ‘Our Arabic Language’ in the four grades. However, teachers and educators should use Blooms Taxonomy to encourage higher- order thought in their pupils by building up from lower level cognitive skills.