TY - JOUR
T1 - Development of a New Checklist for Evaluating Reading Comprehension Textbooks.
AU - Karamoozian, Fatemeh Mahbod
AU - Riazi, Abdolmehdi
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - The purpose of the present study was to explore the main quality features of several available textbook evaluation checklists proposed by researchers and professionals in this field while it has a special focus on reading comprehension textbook evaluation schemes and checklists. All checklists were explored in terms of their format, scope, applied terms and concepts, weighting/rating systems, guidelines, and whether they were piloted by the developers. In the field of textbook evaluation research, methods are rarely discussed clearly and in-depth. However, three basic methods of textbook evaluation can be discerned in the related literature: impressionistic method, checklist method, and in-depth method. Compared to the two other alternatives, impressionistic evaluation and in-depth evaluation, the checklist method is known to be more advantageous. The results of this study revealed that although the reviewed checklists have several strong points specifically regarding their format and scope, they mostly fail in terms of other features that lead to practicality. Furthermore, the available checklists are mostly designed to evaluate general English textbooks while they are not generalizable enough to be adapted to evaluate other English language textbooks. This study also focused on several specifically developed checklists for evaluating reading comprehension textbooks, while the results revealed that they also suffer from the same shortcomings. Therefore, based on the current study, the authors have developed a new checklist in which they have eliminated the mentioned defects. This checklist is a comprehensive reference specifically for evaluating reading comprehension textbooks while flexible enough to be used for other purposes too.
AB - The purpose of the present study was to explore the main quality features of several available textbook evaluation checklists proposed by researchers and professionals in this field while it has a special focus on reading comprehension textbook evaluation schemes and checklists. All checklists were explored in terms of their format, scope, applied terms and concepts, weighting/rating systems, guidelines, and whether they were piloted by the developers. In the field of textbook evaluation research, methods are rarely discussed clearly and in-depth. However, three basic methods of textbook evaluation can be discerned in the related literature: impressionistic method, checklist method, and in-depth method. Compared to the two other alternatives, impressionistic evaluation and in-depth evaluation, the checklist method is known to be more advantageous. The results of this study revealed that although the reviewed checklists have several strong points specifically regarding their format and scope, they mostly fail in terms of other features that lead to practicality. Furthermore, the available checklists are mostly designed to evaluate general English textbooks while they are not generalizable enough to be adapted to evaluate other English language textbooks. This study also focused on several specifically developed checklists for evaluating reading comprehension textbooks, while the results revealed that they also suffer from the same shortcomings. Therefore, based on the current study, the authors have developed a new checklist in which they have eliminated the mentioned defects. This checklist is a comprehensive reference specifically for evaluating reading comprehension textbooks while flexible enough to be used for other purposes too.
M3 - Article
SN - 1682-3257
JO - ESP World
JF - ESP World
ER -