An Evaluation of Merits and Demerits of Iranian First Year Junior High School English Textbook Prospect1

Teachers perceptions and beliefs play indispensable roles in the process of textbook evaluation. With regard to various textbook evaluation on Iranian textbooks and little evaluation on the newly-developed textbook, this paper carried out an evaluation of the Iranian junior high school new textbook Prospect1 in order to find out teachers perceptions. To this end, a semi- structure interview was conducted to scrutinize the merits and demerits of Prospect1. Twenty male and female English junior high school teachers in Gorgan, ranging from 2 to 30 years of teaching experience took part in this study. The findings of the research revealed that integration of four skills is emphasized although writing has less attention. The findings of the research revealed some main merits such as: a. The emphasis is on Communicative Language Teaching approach; b. The emphasis is on the integration of four skills; c. Attention is paid to the students needs, d: classroom activities emphasize on pair work and group work ; e. Prospect series include student book, work book ,teacher book and audio CD for the first time in Iran and some demerits which are as follows: a. Letters are not in the right range; Each lesson provides three letters; b. Time allocated to the book in curriculum program is not enough; c. Reading and writing are paid less attention; d. writing skill is developed at the level of letters. Some practical implications are presented which are on the basis of the results of this study and might be of use to the teachers, syllabus designers and materials developers. Finally, some strands of research are suggested.

کلیدواژه ها:

textbook evaluation ، prospect 1 ، juniors