Probing Iranian Seventh-Grade English Coursebook from a Grammaring Perspective: Evaluation of a Change

The importance and the exigency to evaluate second or foreign language teaching materials are largely recognized among the experts in the field. In addition, the significant role of grammar in second language acquisition and the emergence of various new concepts and approaches to teaching this aspect of language cannot be denied. The current study, therefore, attempts a qualitative evaluation of the Iranian Schools Seventh Grade English book, that is, Prospect 1 English for Schools Series, from the perspective of Larsen-Freeman’s concept of grammaring. The results revealed that compared with former books of the same grade, the above-mentioned book has detached from the traditional approach to grammar instruction and has taken steps forward to an ability-oriented approach. In some aspects, however, the book does not seem to proceed significantly in terms of providing more tangible social contexts for communication, and the dull mechanical exercises existing in traditional approaches seem to be still common in the book.