Evaluating English Textbook: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Abstract

This paper examines an English textbook used in Turkey within the context of sociolinguistic issues. Various studies on book evaluation can be found in the literature; however, there seems to be very limited research analysing the course books from a sociolinguistic perspective. By employing the qualitative research design, the 3rd grade English book Just Fun English (Tiras, 2019) published for public primary schools was analysed using the Sociolinguistic Textbook Evaluation Rubric (Atar & Erdem, 2020). Within the framework of the six criteria of the rubric, the results indicate that the textbook is hardly in conformity with the sociolinguistic matters. Though the textbook considers the linguistic ecology of learners and makes learning English accessible to the public, there are no examples of non-native and non-standard accents of English, non-native-non-native interaction, and successful bilinguals. This study contributes to a growing body of literature by evaluating a textbook concerning the sociolinguistic issues and it offers some insights into the improvement of the textbook.