Evaluating the long-term effectiveness of English language coursebooks at Turkish public high schools

Abstract

In this pre-use evaluation study, the long-term effectiveness of the contents of the English language coursebooks provided by the Ministry of Turkish National Education for high school students (i.e., 9th to 12th graders) in Turkey were evaluated, exploiting Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2013) fifteen universal coursebook evaluation criteria. In so doing, the evaluators initially used the criteria independently to evaluate the coursebooks before achieving a consensus on their average scores. They discussed each criterion along with the effectiveness of the activities in two units (i.e., Unit 2 & Unit 7). The results indicated that the coursebooks are potentially quite effective in respect of providing students with communicative opportunities, use of idioms, integrated technology, self-evaluation opportunities, and illustrations in use. Conversely, some of the common deficient characteristics of the coursebooks encompass the lack of activities that promote the use of English as a lingua franca, being void of opportunities for students to continue learning English after the course, offering no flexibility for effective localization and insufficient catering for the needs of the students. All in all, the coursebooks can only be partially effective in facilitating long-term acquisition of English.