Scrutinizing the Appropriateness of the Intermediate ILI English Series in the EFL Context of Iran

Abstract

Textbook evaluation has been a matter of interest in almost every EFL/ESL context. Since some aspects of the quality of language learning and teaching stem from the instructor’s textbook adaptation and use and since different EFL/ESL textbooks target at touching different aspects of pupils’ needs, carrying out an assessment of a particular textbook before its adoption and adaptation is of paramount importance. Accordingly, scrutinizing the weaknesses and strengths of the textbooks that are currently being taught in the most popular and the biggest institute of Iran seems to be inevitable. Hence, the aim of this study is to evaluate the Intermediate ILI (Iran Language Institute) English Series. To this end, eighty highly experienced male and female teachers from different branches in different cities of Iran were called for cooperation. The teachers ranged from BA holders to PhD candidates. In order to obtain the intended data, a forty item questionnaire developed by David R.A Litz (2000) was given to every instructor. Analyzing the data was done by running Independent samples t-test and basic statistics in SPSS 16 package for windows. The results show that although the series favor some strong points, the majority of the sections of the textbooks suffer a few number of pitfalls. Moreover, the overall evaluation of the series manifests the average level of satisfaction in every component on the part of the teachers. Also, the ideas of male and female instructors were different in “Conclusion”, “Subject and Content” and “Language Type” categories.