Local evaluation of an EFL textbook: ‘Mosaic 1: Listening and speaking’

Abstract

The present study was carried out to evaluate Mosaic 1: Listening and Speaking. This study took an advantage of mixed method. The adopted checklist was retrieved from Al-sowat’s (2012) with minor revision to gain qualitative data. The appropriateness of the checklist was sought vis a vis the comments by two faculty members of Guilan University with research interests in curriculum design and development. The evaluation was based on criteria, namely, lay-out and design, objectives, activities and tasks, balance of skills, language type, subject and content, social and cultural value, structures and vocabulary, and teachers’ need. Some weaknesses and strengths of this book were discussed accordingly. In addition, the attitude of thirty freshmen towards this book was investigated via opinionnaire to gather quantitative data. The validity of the oppinionnaire was checked by the Faculty members of Guilan University. The estimated value of Cronbach’s alpha for opinionnaire was (α=.780). Findings showed shortcomings and strengths such as limited number of pictures, usefulness of objectives, appropriateness of the activities for different learning styles, combination of different activities, little attention to reading and writing, lack of unplanned interaction, lack of different dialects and accents (World Englishes), culturally unbiased. Moreover, the result of the opinionnaire indicated highest positive attitude towards items (11, 13, 2, 6, 8, and 3) respectively. This study might be of help to speaking and listening teachers, syllabus designers, textbook evaluators in that they could apply appropriate addition, deletion, adaption and adoption if using Mosaic1: speaking and listening.