Textbook

Among the linguistic resources for creating grammatical metaphor, nominalization rewords processes and properties metaphorically as nouns within the experiential metafunction of language. Following Halliday's (1998a) classification of grammatical metaphor, the current study investigated nominalization exploited in an English applied linguistics textbook and its corresponding Persian translation. Selection of these textbooks was motivated by consulting 10 ELT professors. Analysis started by identifying nominalization instances and recurrent patterns of nominalization in the books through adopting a mixed approach. The frequency of nominal expressions was counted, and eventually chi-square was run to find out the probable significance of nominalization use in English and Persian academic text samples. The quantitative differences in using nominalization turned out to be significant, and results revealed variations in the ranking patterns of nominalization in both texts. Qualities as entities tended to recur more in English than in Persian. However, the noun to noun modifier was frequently exploited in the Persian translation. The similarities in the employment of nominalization patterns might reflect the awareness of both the author and the translator of the role of metadiscourse markers in scientific texts. The main reason for the differences lies in the matter that knowledge is realized in different languages. The findings of this study have implications for textbook writers, English for Academic Purposes students, and translators.

Applying technologies has recently caused language education to undertake influential modifications. Hence, this study tried to investigate the impact of using technology in form of multimedia on improving grammar knowledge of Iranian high school students and also examined their attitudes toward multimedia-based mode of instruction. To do so, three intact classes of lower intermediate students were randomly divided into three groups: multimedia, multimedia + textbook, and control group. After homogenizing the groups regarding their proficiency level, the pre-test was run and results indicated no significant difference. Treatment lasted for 8 sessions, during which the first experimental group was taught through using multimedia elements like cartoons, texts, and Power Point Presentation. The second group had their textbook besides multimedia, while the control group was instructed traditionally by means of the textbook. Comparing the groups’ scores on the post-test revealed the superiority of multimedia + textbook group over the other groups in their grammar test performance. The questionnaire outcomes also showed more positive tendency of the students in this group in comparison to the multimedia only group toward application of multimedia programs. Findings of this study might open a novel way to assist EFL learners to increase their grammar knowledge more successfully.

This study has been carried out to develop a critical checklist for global/commercial textbooks which play a crucial role in language teaching/learning. For this aim, a number of items have been developed based on a comprehensive review of the related literature and experts’ opinions. The tentative checklist was administered to the targeted population, yet 326 checklists were deemed appropriate for the analysis. The statistical analyses utilized in this study were exploratory factor analysis and partial confirmatory factor analysis. Prior to the exploratory factor analysis, a correlation analysis reduced the items into 44. Next, the exploratory factor analysis identified ten components. Additionally, six items were excluded from the checklist due to simultaneous factor loading and the finalized checklist was truncated into 38 items.  To investigate the possibility for further validation studies, the result of partial confirmatory factor analysis was not statistically significant.  Results of this study have the potentials to shed some lights on the ideological aspects of textbook evaluation.

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.

Abstract Driven by Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt’s (2000) theory of Professional Identity (PI), this study aims to investigate teachers’ perception of their PI in relation to the English textbooks they use in EFL classes. In-depth interview with four Iranian EFL teachers and the school principal was conducted. The teachers’ reports were employed to investigate their PI in relation to the textbooks they used. Furthermore, the school curriculum was analyzed through an interview with the school principal and examining the school documents. Content analysis of the interview data revealed that all the teachers viewed the content knowledge dimension of their PI reliant on the textbooks. Over the years, they had gained more autonomy in adapting the content or selecting more supplementary sources. Overall, the participants in this research highlighted the pivotal role of textbooks in the construction of their PI, most importantly in the formation of their content knowledge and the least in the development of their pedagogical knowledge. The analysis of the school curriculum revealed a heavy reliance of many decisions on textbooks directly or indirectly. The findings in this study will provide more insights for curriculum developers, language school managers, teacher educators and teachers who have a say in curriculum decisions when learning about the crucial role of textbooks in PI.

Nowadays, due to the growing process of global warming, increase of greenhouse gases and reduction of natural resources, environmental crises are more than ever before, therefore one of the topics that has attracted a lot of attention in educational systems is to present new attitudes of conservation. Environment is in education, which is considered one of the important tasks of the educational system and is applied in educational books. Considering the importance of the environment, the purpose of this research is to analyze the content of fourth grade textbooks based on the level of attention paid to green management components. The research method is descriptive and qualitative and quantitative content analysis, which analyzed the data using Shannon's entropy technique. The statistical population of the research includes social studies, Farsi and experimental science books of the fourth grade of elementary school, which due to the nature of the subject, sampling was not done and all the statistical population was examined. and the research tool in this research is a checklist and based on the report of the technical and research office of the "Green Management Steering Center", the indicators of green management in several main areas including energy management, water and wastewater management, benefit from renewable energy, waste management, pollution control Sound, transportation and the spread of culture and strengthening of social responsibilities in the field of environment, the selected books were studied according to these components. The obtained results showed that the highest coefficient of indicators related to green management for the fourth grade social studies course was for the index of energy management and use of renewable energy, respectively. For the Persian course, water and sewage management had an importance coefficient of 0.26, and for the experimental science course, water and sewage management, use of renewable energy, noise pollution control and transportation, energy management and promotion of culture and environment had an importance coefficient of was 0.17.

The preface which initiates textbooks is a significant convention in writing academic textbooks as it introduces the book, explains assumptions, clarifies expectations, and convinces the readers to read on. In the present study, using Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, ninety textbook prefaces written by both native and nonnative writers, in both hard and soft sciences, were selected and analyzed aiming at exploring writers’ preferences for the type and frequency of appraisal resources. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the writers plentifully used appraisal resources in the prefaces to express their attitudes, positions, and goals of the inclusion of various sections in the book. Attitude resources, in terms of frequency, are the most frequent, and Engagement elements are the least with Graduation items coming in the middle position. This is quite natural as all academic writing is to express opinions and positions, and prefaces, specifically, are less probable to indicate others’ attitudes and stances, but the authors’ positions and purposes behind the book. Based on the findings, it is concluded that native textbook writers are superior to nonnative writers in terms of communication power, establishing solidarity, and a convincing and forceful voice. The frequency of the subsystem of the main appraisals is also detailed in the article. This study can have implications for textbook writers, teachers, EFL learners, and materials developers.

Since 2012, the ELT experts of Iran’s Ministry of Education have developed and published series titled ‘ Prospect ’ which includes three successive textbooks designed for teaching English to the students of grades 7th, 8th and 9th of junior high schools of Iran. It is a fact that the key components of all educational programs are the textbooks, the efficiency of which contributes to the accomplishment of the pedagogical goals of the curriculum. With the goal of helping Iranian materials developers modify ‘ Prospect ’ series and improve the overall quality of the very textbooks, this study aimed to conduct evaluation over one of the series namely ‘ Prospect 1 ’ through screening EFL teachers' perception who have been incorporating the textbook in their online and conventional classrooms at least during the last five years. By emulating a model provided by McDonough and Shaw (1993) on the basis of external and internal evaluation of textbooks, a 55-five-point Likert scale questionnaire was adapted by the researchers and the required data were gathered from 46 female and 58 male English teachers in urban and rural junior high schools of Gilan and Mazandaran provinces of Iran. The findings revealed that EFL teachers were relatively dissatisfied with some important facets of ‘ Prospect 1. ’ Our respondents believed that the textbook is really poor in printing quality, and it lacks attractive and motivating pictures and illustrations. Moreover, not incorporating variant dialects and authentic language, not using modern techniques such as typography and perceptual saliency, and not considering the needs of the learners or different learning styles, are among other shortcomings that seem to be in dire need of modification.

In the world of language teaching, textbooks have a central role; therefore, they influence the entire process of learning/teaching languages. Having them analyzed and evaluated is vital for ensuring their efficiency and alignment with the goals of language classes. Reviewing the vision series textbook evaluation studies is the purpose of this paper. Due to the extensive use of this series in Iranian high schools, students' worldviews are inevitably affected by it. Students may also be lead wrongly by biased perspectives in high school textbooks. Since these textbooks are new and taught to every Iranian student, they need continuous evaluation and analysis to achieve their specified goals. While some studies have evaluated and analyzed these textbooks, a review of published articles in this field is still lacking. Throughout the literature, 24 research articles from the last 5 years are discussed. Generally, the study found that most teachers believe Vision text books have adhered to the guidelines of the CLT method and are an improvement over the old English language teaching books. Several revisions have also been suggested because they believe these books have cultural shortcomings and do not allow students to become familiar with the target culture. As a final point, some implications are presented regarding the evaluation of English textbooks in Iranian contexts.