Analysis of the Conceptual, Comparative, and Functional Aspects of “Prospect 2” on the Basis of Cisar’s (2000) Checklist

Esfandiari, M. (2018)

Abstract:

Textbooks play an important role in language classrooms in all educational institutions, schools, colleges, language institutes all over the world. They are a kind of support for both teachers and learners and give them a kind of consistency. Each country uses certain textbooks for the process of foreign language learning. In Iran, Prospect 2 has been recently presented for language learning in the school context. Most studies have evaluated the communicative aspect of such textbook and few studies have investigated the functional and comparative aspects of the textbooks as well as their expansion of concepts. Hence, this study made an attempt to evaluate the new textbook used in Iranian junior high school named Prospect 2 which was introduced by the Iranian ministry of education in 2013. The Cisar’s checklist was used to indicate the advantages and disadvantages of the textbook in three aspects of functional, comparative and expansion of concepts. The study sample included 10 teachers in the city of Neka. The questionnaire consisted of10 items in Likert-scale on three categories including connectivity (expansion of concepts), comparative and functional aspects. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the data by SPSS software. The results of the analysis showed that teachers had a positive view towards the expansion of concepts and the comparative aspect in the textbook. However, teachers had a negative view towards the functional aspect of Prospect 2. Results of the study had implications for policy makers, material developers, language teachers and EFL learners.