Iranian junior high school English book series (Right path to English) weighted against material evaluation checklists

Abstract

Choosing a course textbook is an overwhelming task for both teachers and administrators. The aim of this study was to evaluate Iranian junior high school textbook series base on validated criteria. For this purpose a careful analyzing textbook evaluation checklists suggested by Sheldon (1984) skierso (1991) and Tucker (1992) was picked out. Among proposed criteria, eighteen critical features were selected to analyze Iranian junior high school series written by Birjandi in (1991). The Criteria were applied to the series analytically by researcher to examine the materials. The criteria in a form of questionnaire given to 15 experienced teachers who were teaching mentioned series for more than ten years. The gathered data revealed that it lacks appropriate layout and physical characteristics, materials have not be recycled, not all skills have been considered equally, emphasis is on grammatical points which practiced through speaking and listening. Moreover; recordings are artificial, no attention is paid to students needs and topics are out of date and boring. Also audio-visual materials, teachers’ guide and communicative tasks seems to be forgotten by writer. Therefore; all eighteen features except vocabulary lists, availability of glossary and lots of grammatical points have not been considered a lot. That is, students’ interests have been ignored totally and little communicative issues have been regarded in these series. In fact, at end of this determined time students would be proficient at structural points with no efficiency at communication. These findings can be helpful for curriculum designers, textbook writers to design some valuable textbooks that are useful for teachers to teach language communicatively.