A Critical Evaluation of Visual Elements in Iranian Junior High School English Textbooks

Researchers and teachers are provided with a large pool of literature concerning textbooks evaluation in EFL contexts such as Iran, but there is still a gap regarding the evaluation of textbooks prepared by the Ministry of Education since teachers seem to be under duress to use the textbooks in their classes with no chance to adapt their materials. Considering the widespread use of images in instructional materials, it is important to scrutinize their effects on language learner's understanding. Due to paucity of the studies on evaluating visual materials (i.e., images) in English textbooks in Iran, the current researchers attempted to evaluate the visual materials included in the junior high school English textbooks to see if they were effective to meet the Iranian learner's needs and English language teaching objectives. The findings obtained from two semi-structured interviews with 35 Iranian English teachers and 49 English students indicated that the teacher participants had positive views towards the connectivity of the visual materials in the textbooks and the objectives of the course. Also, they believed that providing the visual materials which are culturally and religiously appropriate could facilitate the process of teaching. In contrast, the student participants did not demonstrate such positive views towards the visual materials.