Vision 1

In countries where textbooks are considered as the main source of teaching/learning process, textbook evaluation seems to be inevitable and necessary. The current study aimed at evaluating the new English textbook entitled “Vision 1”, developed for the Iranian first grade high school students. To achieve this goal, two groups of participants took part in the study. They consisted of 30 teachers teaching this book in Baghmalek in Khuzestan province and 70 students studying in the first grade high school in the city mentioned. The quantitative data were collected through two questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to evaluate the book in terms of seven criteria namely, practical considerations, layout and design, activities, skills, language type, subject and content and cultural considerations. The findings showed that teachers and students were interested in the book in all criteria except cultural considerations. The results also showed no significant difference between Iranian teachers' and students' perceptions towards the book. It can be concluded that the book needs to be modified to include some aspects of cultural values to open a window into learning about the target language culture.

Textbooks are considered as the common features of the classrooms and are important means to make contributions to curricula. Therefore, their contents are very essential to develop the adequate curriculum planning. A textbook analysis is a means by which different features of the textbooks can be analyzed and hence their effectiveness is validated. This study set out to evaluate the content of Vision 1, the textbook of Senior High School, grade 1, in order to investigate in which six levels of cognition in Bloom’s (2001) Revised Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain the activities of the four skills of Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing would be graded. Thus, the activities of the textbook were codified based on the coding levels in Bloom's Revised Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain. Then, the data were analyzed and the frequencies and percentages of occurrence of various codes related to the cognition levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy were calculated. The results of the study did not detect any evidence for the presence of higher levels of the cognition and thinking process in the textbook activities related to the four skills. In other words, all activities in the domain of Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing were classified in low levels of cognition, namely Remembering, Understanding, and Applying and failed to nurture the students for high levels of thinking skills. The findings provided some supports for supplying complementary materials by the teachers in order to train the learners for higher levels of the cognition.

Since the emergence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), textbooks in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have sought to align with its principles in order to gain wider acceptance and credibility. On the other hand, enhancing speaking skills within the school context in Iran has become a pressing demand. A critical component in facilitating the attainment of this ambitious objective is the effective development and utilization of appropriate instructional materials. This study seeks to critically evaluate the efficacy of Vision 1, a domestically developed coursebook implemented in Iranian high schools, in comparison to the international standard exemplified by Solutions Elementary (E.). To this end, four evaluative criteria were utilized: the communicative nature of speaking tasks, alignment with the Weak or Strong version of CLT, the type of prompts used for eliciting speaking, and the frequency of speaking activities.  Methodologically, content analysis was conducted, and the degree of inter-coder agreement was quantified using Cohen’s Kappa. Subsequently, the obtained data underwent statistical scrutiny, encompassing both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Non-parametric Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests were employed to discern statistically significant disparities between the two textbooks concerning the specified criteria. Outcomes indicated significant differences in all the four criteria used. Overall, Solutions E. exhibited superiority over Vision 1 in terms of both quantity and diversity of speaking activities. The activities in Solutions E. are more communicatively oriented, fostering willingness to communicate in the target learners. Recommendations were posited to ameliorate Vision 1, particularly in the sphere of speaking skill development in Iranian context.