"Playway-Rainbow"-Edition. An introduction and analysis of teaching material for English as a foreign language at primary level

In order to check what influence the research results and the consequential demands on foreign language lessons at primary level had on the currently used teaching material, I want to examine the popular books Playway 3 and Playway 4 (Klett, 2001 – Rainbow edition), which are used in the classes 3 and 4, and the additional material. There is a special edition for North-Rhine Westphalia, which differs slightly from the federal version. When English became an official subject in 2003 and the first provisional guidelines had been published, the State Government decided to use Playway only after a few changes would have been made. However, this paper is concerned with the federal edition, which was published in 2001 and is still used in many schools.