EXPLORING THE FLEXIBILITY OF ESP MATERIALS THROUGH THE IPO MODEL: CORPUS AND CONSUMER INSIGHTS FROM THE TURKISH EFL CONTEXT

Abstract

Previous research tended to exclusively conduct expert/user evaluation and rely heavily on subjective survey data for simply ascertaining general satisfaction with a fixed predetermined set of coursebook features. However, not only the material’s absolute worth separated from the users’ personal opinions but also multiple perspectives on its relative worth informed by their lived learning experiences should be concurrently assessed to make better informed decisions about textbook adoption. Thus, this multimethod study sought to provide a holistic, multidimensional and more realistic assessment of coursebook performance through conflating objective information on its compositionality with reflective user knowledge about the actual functioning. We used the inputs-processes-outcomes (IPO) model for the deconstruction of a global coursebook in dental English, based the expert review on corpus findings and complemented it with the less-studied student-users’ (87 sophomores from a Turkish-medium dental school of a large urban public university) retrospective evaluation against preferred criteria. The corpus-based IPO analysis of the coursebook (non-)texts and content analysis of their post-use reflections revealed that: i. striking the right balance between text comprehensibility/authenticity and content breadth/depth emerged as a major concern to lower-level learners, ii. disciplinary vocabulary coverage and explicit teaching of high-frequency dental words constituted its greatest strengths, and iii. despite awareness of the need for differentiation in the sequencing, task difficulty and interaction patterns to develop fluency and thrive in the 21st-century workplace, they prioritised meaningful practice over freer use to survive university and approved the cyclical progression from whole-class comprehension-based procedures to text-manipulative production activities. To achieve deeper learning outcomes than functional language mastery, it still needs transformation through: learner-compiled (e-)portfolios of academic and humorous genres, increased visibility for women dentists, creative use of illustrations, conscious attention to grammar and ludic language use, and integration of cross-cultural elements and service-learning projects on linguistic/cultural mediation.