Aspects of Vocabulary Knowledge in Payame Noor University English Textbooks and their Effects on the Quality of Iranian Higher Education

Textbooks play a significant role in higher education. In the ESP textbooks vocabulary knowledge is considered as a principal component of the linguistic competency that the students must develop. This study seeks to explore the extent to which diverse aspects of vocabulary knowledge have been taken into account in Payame Noor University (PNU) ESP textbooks. To this aim, vocabulary activities were randomly selected from 02 ESP textbooks in Human Sciences. These activities were analyzed descriptively and qualitatively employing a content researchermade checklist tapping into nine aspects of vocabulary knowledge. The results indicated that the ESP textbooks mainly attend to formmeaning. These textbooks focused on conceptreference and grammatical functions in the next levels, while they paid less attention to the communicational aspects. Other aspects were not observed. The findings have important implications for revising the methods of presenting and teaching vocabulary knowledge in ESP textbooks and classes. There is a need for a more comprehensive treatment of vocabulary knowledge by the textbook developers and teachers in order to enhance the quality of ESP courses. This study further discusses the significance of the findings in the context of Iranian higher education.