Chapter 1: The textbook evaluation project

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directed learning (Cunningsworth 1995). A learner without a textbook might be out 
of focus and teacher-dependent. 
In spite of the aforementioned positive view of textbook use, however, there have 
also been certain reservations about this use. One of the most cited concerns is that 
textbooks are often implicitly prescriptive and thus might control the methods, 
processes, and procedures of classroom practice and ‘deskill’ teachers (Allwright 
1982). Another concern is that since textbooks are often written for global markets, 
they might not suit all classrooms and might require adaptation to better meet 
students’ true needs (Richards 2005). 
More importantly, recent criticisms have been targeted at the quality of textbooks. It 
has been repeatedly shown that many English textbooks represent biased views of 
gender and stereotyping (Clarke and Clarke 1990; Carrell and Korwitz 1994; Renner 
1997). For example, Hartman and Judd (1978) found that women suffered low 
visibility in textbooks due to the use of sexist language. They also found that women 
were often stereotypically related to such social roles as housework and childcare in 
many textbooks for young and mature learners. The consequence, as the argument 
went, is learners might absorb these personal biases and develop undesirable 
prejudices (Gilbert and Rowe 1989). 
Other researchers such as Prodromou (1988) and Alptekin (1993) pointed out that 
textbooks are often cultural artifacts because it is impossible to teach a language 
without embedding it in its cultural base. However, in many instances this might 

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alienate learners if they are forced to express themselves within a culture they have
hardly had any experience with and been prepared for. 
Besides, recent appraisals of commercially produced textbooks have also suggested 
that many textbooks tend to offer classroom learners little opportunity for learning 
how to properly communicate intentions such as requesting, inviting, disagreeing, 
complaining, and so on in the second language (L2) (Bardovi-Harlig 2001; Vellenga 
2004). This is firstly because many textbooks either do not present or they present 
communicative functions (i.e. speech acts) unrealistically. Boxer and Pickering (1995), 
for example, found that textbooks generally do not contain indirect complaints (i.e. 
complaining about oneself or someone/ something that is not present in the 
conversation) as a solidarity-establishing strategy. Bouton (1996) pointed out that the 
textbook that he investigated taught invitations that rarely occur in published native 
speaker (NS) corpora. The reason for the unrealistic description of communicative 
functions in many textbooks is textbooks are often based largely on NS intuition 
about how communicative functions are linguistically expressed instead of making 
use of authentic speech (Boxer and Pickering 1985). As research has shown, in 
contrast to intuition about language forms or grammar, NS intuition about language 
use is generally unreliable (Wolfson 1988) and therefore cannot adequately inform 
instructional materials (Boxer and Pickering 1995). 
Secondly, what also adds to the difficulty in learning how to communicate intentions 
via textbooks is many textbooks seem unhelpful in teaching appropriate rules of 

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using different communicative functions. In order to use a communicative function 
appropriately, learners need to know not only linguistic resources to express it but 
also the rules of use. However, previous research has indicated that textbooks 
generally provide insufficient information regarding when and for what purpose it is 
appropriate to make use of a communicative function and which expressions would 
be appropriate in a particular situation (i.e. meta-pragmatic information) (Crandall 
and Basturkmen 2004). Teacher’s manuals, unfortunately, rarely supplement this 
information (Vellenga 2004). 
Similarly, proponents of authentic classroom language models such as Brazil, 
Coulthard, and Johns (1980), Levis (1999), Cathcart (1989), Bardovi-Harlig et al 
(1991), and Yule, Matthis and Hopkins (1992) have also pointed out that many 
scripted textbook language models and dialogues are unnatural and present an 
oversimplification of language. Thus they tend to inadequately prepare students for 
the types of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and discourse that are used in real 
world communication. While authentic materials do not automatically bring about 
effective learning and definitely should not be considered more important than their 
relevance to learners’ needs and experience (Day 2003), an unrealistic and 
oversimplified presentation of language use can be more inhibiting than helpful in 
developing learners’ language proficiency and communicative competence.
It is owing to these potential problems that textbooks should be carefully evaluated 
and selected before being used for a language program. Textbook evaluation helps 

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the managerial and teaching staff select the most appropriate materials available for a 
particular course (i.e. predictive evaluation). It also helps to identify the strengths and 
weaknesses of a particular textbook that is already in use (i.e. in-use and retrospective 
evaluation). This is to inform teachers in the process of textbook adaptation and 
decision-making for the next course (Ellis 1997). 

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