A Comparative Evaluation of Iranian Junior High School Textbooks, Prospect 2 & Right Path to English 3,From Teachers' Perspectives

This study was an attempt to evaluate the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) package,namely 'Prospect 2: English for Schools', which has newly been developed and is currently being used in junior high school classes across Iran, in comparison with the previous textbook, i.e., ' Right Path to English 3' from the viewpoints of teachers within the framework proposed by Litz (2005). Accordingly, the views of 60 English language teachers from kashan, Aran and Bidgol cities were obtained about seven basic criteria defined in the framework. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 15 teachers out of the original sample. The collected quantitative data were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics. A thematic analysis procedure was also employed to analyze the qualitative data gathered via the interviews. The findings of the survey indicated that although the change has been a great step toward teaching and learning English for practical and communicative purposes, there are some deficiencies in some aspects that should be compensated by employing appropriate supplementary techniques and activities. The findings might be inspiring for the materials developers and syllabus or curriculum designers in Ministry of Education to reconsider those aspects of the textbook that are still in need of improvement, and for teachers to incorporate extra supplementary materials to compensate for the revealed deficiencies

کلیدواژه ها:

textbook evaluation ، Litz’s checklist ، high school textbooks