Abstract:
Textbooks play a crucial role in English language teaching and learning. One of the methods for selecting the most appropriate textbook for a particular educational purpose is comparing two or several similar textbooks with each other. Textbook evaluation can provide useful information about the strengths and weaknesses of textbooks and can lead to the selection of the most suitable materials for specific purposes. The present study is a critical comparison of Prospect 2, taught in junior high schools in Iran, and English Net 6, taught in junior high schools in Turkey, in terms of their physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning and teaching contents, and language skills. The participants of the study were 20 English teachers who completed two evaluation checklists. The textbook evaluation checklist that was used in the study was based on the guidelines and framework of AbdelWahab’s checklist (2013)with 123 items. The results of the study indicated that the Turkish textbook surpassed the Iranian one in many aspects of the text book evaluation checklist. The results revealed that in comparison with English Net 6, Prospect 2 had more weaknesses in terms of physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning and teaching contents, and language skills.
Machine summary:
The present study is a critical comparison of Prospect 2, taught in junior high schools in Iran, and English Net 6, taught in junior high schools in Turkey, in terms of their physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning and teaching contents, and language skills.
The results revealed that in comparison with English Net 6, Prospect 2 had more weaknesses in terms of physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning and teaching contents, and language skills.
Procedures of data collection and analysis went simultaneously and a selected EFL textbook was explored thoroughly with a particular focus on the proposed current checklist criteria under four main categories; Physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning-teaching content, and language skills with sixteen subcategories: general appearance, layout and design , illustrations, book objectives, teaching aids, teaching methods, subject and content, exercises, social and cultural contexts, listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary , and pronunciation Results Before analyzing the data to answer the research questions and to test the hypotheses, their distribution was analyzed by using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to ensure that they were compatible with the assumption of normality.
As the results indicate, there was a significant difference between English Net 6 and Prospect 2 textbooks in terms of physical and utilitarian attributes, efficient outlay of objectives and supplementary materials, learning-teaching content, and language skills.