Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy in Reading Texts in EFL/ESL Settings
Authors: Köksal Dinçay , Ulum Ömer Gökhan , Yürük Nurcihan 
Published: February 2023

Introduction: Among its contemporaries, the updated Bloom’s taxonomy is perhaps the most widely used cognitive process model. It is a categorization paradigm that emphasizes the cognitive levels beginning with remembering the information and progressing to more complicated levels such as producing the knowledge. Education psychologists want to assist instructors, policymakers, and curriculum creators in designing education that enables students to effectively retain, retrieve, and apply the selected content. Classifying information in a precise sequence that is durable in a person’s memory can aid learners in effectively storing, retrieving, retrieving, and using facts; otherwise, the whole learning process may be impeded. Thus, it is imperative that students acquire the fundamental knowledge prior to attempting to interpret current information to develop meaningful knowledge (Darwazeh, 2017). The purpose of this research was to determine the degree to which the updated Bloom’s taxonomy is included into the reading sections of EFL textbooks developed for Turkish high school students. According to the results of the research, the evaluated textbooks lacked the higher level cognitive abilities outlined in the updated Bloom’s taxonomy. Consequently, based on the results, certain hypotheses have been formulated to indicate how reading sections of textbooks now being written or to be published might reference the updated Bloom’s taxonomy.

Methods: The objective of this research is to determine the degree to which EFL textbooks incorporate higher and lower level questions based on the updated Bloom’s taxonomy. In the study, the overall reading sections of the EFL textbooks were examined. In other words, the cognitive level of the reading passages was determined using the updated Bloom’s taxonomy. Consequently, the approach used in this study is descriptive content analysis in qualitative research. The updated cognitive levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy were referenced in the classification of reading questions in EFL textbooks.

Results: The data indicate that the reading text questions did not target higher cognitive levels. Given that remembering is associated with working memory and short-term memory, it is doubtful that it can assess long-term memory. To reinforce knowledge in the long-term memory, it is necessary to engage higher cognitive processes. It is rare that learners of a foreign language would reinforce lexical, syntactical, and contextual knowledge unless they analyze or assess the corresponding information in the texts. Measuring mainly lower levels of cognition gives them with little data. Additionally, it is crucial to apply integrated activities while reading texts. Reading and writing, or speaking and listening, are examples of integrated tasks. Thus, reading text queries were unable to assist students in producing meaningful texts. Pure and concrete inquiries have just a superficial relationship to understanding.

Discussion: The revised Bloom’s taxonomy is a useful and successful tool for reading classes. Therefore, EFL and ESL instructors, researchers, and textbook authors must use Bloom’s higher cognitive aspects so that EFL students can reinforce texts at the lexical, syntactic, and contextual levels. Taking into account lower cognitive abilities, the most often utilized inquiry type concerned remembering, which includes definition, listing, memorization, recalling, and expressing the pertinent language and material. However, there are significant limits to memorizing dimension for language learners. This constraint may be overcome by including more cognitive elements. It is glaringly obvious that English instructors and textbook authors should include extra questions into reading texts so that foreign and second language English learners may build more productive abilities via reading text questions in line with the updated Bloom’s taxonomy. Due to the relationship between Bloom’s taxonomy and critical syllabus, it is possible to design a critical syllabus to obtain these competencies (Ordem, 2021).

Limitations: This research is confined to the free EFL textbooks issued by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. In other words, only locally authored EFL textbooks are included in the research, as opposed to both locally and internationally published EFL textbooks. Consequently, future research should concentrate on a larger scope. Such an approach should consider the impact of locally authored textbooks and their comparison to textbooks published by international organizations, such as the British Council or Cambridge University Press. This is an important point to consider, as international publishers are likely to bring different perspectives on language learning, which may differ from that found in locally authored textbooks. Further, the research is exclusively confined to the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Therefore, alternative cognitive categorization models should also be applied to assess course contents. This would provide a more comprehensive picture of the students’ learning outcomes, and enable the researchers to evaluate course effectiveness from multiple perspectives. Moreover, the utilization of other cognitive categorization models, such as Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and SOLO Taxonomy, would help to provide a broader context of comparison to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of course.

Conclusions: Revised Bloom’s taxonomy provides helpful and productive stages for EFL students to be creative while reading materials. Creatively approaching a text and its questions requires assembling, creating, designing, articulating, and writing. Evaluation, which involves assessing, debating, defending, judging, choosing, supporting, valuing, and evaluating, is a further step that must be examined. Analyzing is another aspect that requires discriminating between various portions of the text, evaluating, comparing, contrasting, critiquing, differentiating, scrutinizing, and asking. These higher cognitive characteristics were not detected in the assessed reading text questions from textbooks. This lack of higher-order thinking skills presented in the text questions of the assessed textbooks suggests that students are not being adequately prepared to engage in thoughtful dialogue or comprehensive analysis when responding to texts. This is an alarming discovery as these skills are essential for students to demonstrate competency in language arts, develop effective reading strategies, and build critical thinking. This trend highlights the need for teachers to supplement reading material with activities that promote higher-order thinking, such as open-ended questions, research assignments, and group discussions. By incorporating these activities into the classroom, teachers will be able to ensure that students are exposed to the kinds of higher-order thinking that can help them to become engaged, competent readers and critical thinkers.