Learners on the Move: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of Iranian EFL Textbooks

With the advent of new English textbooks, course book evaluation has become an indispensable ingredient in all English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts. Thus, the present study aimed to contribute to this area in the Iranian context by evaluating newly published junior high school (13 to 15 years old) course books (the Prospect series) and examining their weaknesses and strengths from students’ points of view. In so doing, this study employed Litz’s (2005) questionnaire to examine 417 junior high school students’ perspectives. Also, nine students took part in follow-up interviews to elaborate their perspectives about the strengths and weaknesses of the textbooks. The results of the questionnaire showed that students believed that this series requires some modifications regarding the design and lay-out, authenticity in activities, diversity of registers and accents, variety of subjects and content, and cultural presentation. In addition, the students asserted in the interviews that there are some other problems with the textbooks in terms of the selected topics, accessibility and quality of the multimedia materials, organization of the content, and the learning goals that are set. Iranian EFL instruction relies on the Prospect series, and all Iranian junior high school students are taught using these books. The improvements suggested by the students in this study can facilitate development of English course books to better support learners’ goals in the future.