Critical Analysis of Four ESP Textbooks of  SAMT in Soft and Hard Sciences through McDonough and Shaw's Materials Evaluation Model

The present study critically evaluates the current status of ESP textbooks. To this end, a critical evaluation of four ESP textbooks developed by SAMT organization in the soft sciences, namely Architecture and Insurance Management, and the hard sciences, namely Computer Sciences and Civil Engineering was carried out using McDonough and Shaw’s (2003) Materials Evaluation Model. Both visual and content-based aspects of the books were thoroughly evaluated in order to identify their general pedagogical values. The findings demonstrated that the textbooks suffer from some deficiencies and flaws, such as not being up to date, using formulaic exercises, having a monotonous, assembly-line method of presenting texts and exercises, a misconception of the aims of ESP courses and their nature in materials development and lack of face validity. These books also tended to ignore or pay little attention to the development of writing, speaking, and listening skills as well as the reflection of Iranian culture, traditions and local knowledge in their materials. Despite these drawbacks, they enjoyed a good number of merits. Their outstanding features included a main focus on reading comprehension skills, coverage of technical vocabulary and terms and a high level of content relevance in texts conferring a specialized knowledge of the respective fields to the readers. They were also found to adhere to a suitable grading of course content materials. Finally, this paper provides some practical suggestions and solutions for the remedy of the weaknesses in the ESP materials currently in use.