The Evaluation of “Vision” English Textbooks- A Literature Review

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of English Language and Literature, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran.

Abstract

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.

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