A Critical Appraisal of the Language Textbook

This study was an attempt to evaluate the coursebook ―An English Course for Turks‖ which was designed by Turkish Ministry of National Education for use in state high schools. Coursebook evaluation was done from the teachers’ points of views on the premise that teachers, being users and consumers of the coursebook, were in the best position to reflect their experience in relation to the coursebook. Data were collected through questionnaires and interviews. Utmost attention was given to covering all aspects of a coursebook including layout, organization, activities, content, function, notion and language skills. A total of 68 teachers of English from 24 cities across Turkey participated in the study. Data which were analyzed through SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science version 11) suggest that regardless of teaching experience, background, age, and classroom environment, a great majority of English teachers found the coursebook inappropriate in many respects for foreign language teaching and learning. The same research design can also be applied to new textbooks.