EFL Teacher's Perception of the Iranian Junior High School English Textbooks: Do the New Books Fill the Gaps?

Textbooks play a significant role in language learning classrooms. Therefore, evaluating them in terms of their contents will provide helpful insights into their educational purposes. To this end, this study evaluated Iranian newly designed junior high school textbook series (Prospect 1, 2 and 3) and also provided a comparison between this textbook series and the previous version. For doing so, the researchers employed Litz’s (2001) questionnaire and gathered the data from a sample of 55 male and 52 female junior high school teachers. Interview with 20 of the participants was conducted as well. Through data analysis, using descriptive statistics (Mean and Standard Deviation), it was revealed that the participants’ viewpoints were positive in the sense that they approved the changes made in the new curriculum. The newly designed textbooks showed improvements over the previous versions in that they seemed to have set the ground for a more communicative - based teaching and environment.