Evaluation of EFL Textbooks from Teachers' Viewpoints: a Case Study on the Third Grade Secondary School Textbook "Prospect3"

Abstract

The present study was set out with the aim of investigating teachers’ attitude towards the third grade secondary school new English textbook called “Prospects 3”.  To this end, 35 male and female teachers from different Secondary schools in Bandar Abbas took part in the study. The selection of participants was based on convenient sampling. In order to collect relevant data for the study a textbook evaluation checklist formed by McDonough and Shaw (1993), which consisted of 35 items about four aspects of textbooks, including: Aims and achievements, Skills, Language Type, and Technical considerations were administered to teachers. Teachers were given enough time about one month to answer agree/ neutral/ disagree to the items on the checklist based on their observations in the classes. After that, the checklists were collected and analyzed through a descriptive data analysis. In order to achieve the desirable results, means, and standard deviations were calculated. Finally, the result of the study revealed that with respect to this new formed ELT textbook, teachers had more positive attitudes towards aims and achievements, skills, and technical considerations of the book. The findings also revealed that EFL teachers showed the least positive attitude towards Language type, since they believe that in many cases the language and register employed in the textbook, were inauthentic.