Comparing EFL Instructors’ and Learners’ Perspectives on an ESAP Textbook

The purpose of this study was to evaluate English for the Students of Engineering, which is currently taught in the language classrooms at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The purpose of this study was further to examine the viewpoints of EFL instructors and undergraduate students of Engineering of their textbook in terms of seven main factors: practical concerns, course objectives, linguistic issues, subject matter issues, skills and strategies, layout and design, and activities. The participants were 144 students of Engineering studying at the IUST and 84 EFL instructors selected from some universities in Tehran. The instrument of this study was a modified questionnaire developed by Baleghizadeh and Rhimi (2011). Considering the items of the questionnaire, the majority of the respondents in both groups were not satisfied with the textbook in terms of Internet activities, pair and cooperative learning activities, listening and speaking skills, photographs and illustrations, and the layout and design; whereas they were more satisfied with the availability and the grammatical patterns of the textbook. The results also revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the instructors’ and students’ perceptions with regard to the various items of the questionnaire. In particular, the results of MANOVA showed that there were statistically significant differences between all categories of the questionnaire except ‘practical concerns’, ‘relation between course objectives’ and the ‘layout and design’. The findings of the study recommended that EFL instructors improve this textbook in terms of the shortcomings suggested by both students and teachers

کلیدواژه ها:

ESAP ، ESAP textbooks ، textbook evaluation ، English language teaching materials