An Evaluation of Iranian Junior High Schools‛ English Textbooks Using FOG Readability Index and Survey from Experienced Teachers

The aim of this study was to evaluate and analyze the content of English textbooks taught in Guidance Schools according to the Fog readability formula and from the view point of experienced English teachers. The findings: On the whole, the strong points of the books in different cases were as follows: The typing style of the books, good grammar presentation and practice, the organization of content from simple to difficult, clear instructions, correspondence with the children's age and books availability for most of the teachers and students. The weak points of the books were as follows: lacking attractive lay out, not having good pronunciation and vocabulary explanation, not using enough authentic language, having no attention to the learners background knowledge, not having enough correspondence with the children's real life situations, Lacking the audio cassettes.
From the view point of the teachers: There was a significant relationship between the evaluation of the books and the teaching experience, the teachersõ degree and the gender of the teachers. But there wasn’t any significant relationship between the evaluation of the books and the teaching location.
For measuring the readability of the writings, Fog index was used. The results indicated that the readings of the books in all the grade were in low level. That is, they are very simple to read and students need a level higher than these ones. Consequently, all of the books were poor according to the results.