EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Evaluation of Prospect3 in the Light of Cisar’s Communicative Model

Abstract

The significance of ELT materials has been emphasized by many researchers including Williams (1983). A body of research was conducted in Iran on English textbooks in general and Prospect series in particular. However, Prospect3 which is newly introduced to the public education has been scarcely investigated. The alleged communicative approach in this textbook was evaluated in the present research. To this aim, Cisar’s standard-based evaluation scale was used for the analysis based on five communicative goals proposed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL, 1996). The evaluation was done by 200 Iranian EFL students and 30 EFL teachers along the five standards-based communicative goals: communication, cultures, connections, communities and comparisons. The Persian translated version of the scale was used and checked for reliability and validity. The overall scale showed to enjoy a high reliability (.91). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five components and their indicators within the communicative model. The mean scores of EFL students’ and teachers’ rating of each communicative component were compared through an independent-samples T-test via SPSS 21. Both teachers’ and students’ ratings showed that all communicative goals of the textbook were less than partially acceptable (Mean˂2). Prospect3 failed to achieve its claimed communicative goals, as perceived by EFL teachers and students. The present findings make an evidence-based criticism of the alleged communicative promises of the newly-developed EFL textbook, Prospect3. It hopes to raise Iranian ELT material developers’ awareness of the true gist of the communicative approach and hopes to help them revise the target textbook accordingly.