Comparative Evaluation and Analysis of Two Arabic and Persian Language Teaching Resources (Al-’Arabiya Lale’alam & Mina) from Teachers’ Perspective

Arabic and Persian are two languages of Islamic world and choosing second language references to achieve pedagogical goals is important. Using Cunningworth indices (2007), this study examines and compares Al-’Arabiya Lale’alam and Mina series. In particular, the question as to what extent the content of these books confirmed Cunningworth indices from Arabic and Persian language teachers’ point of view and which textbook outperforms and achieves a better rank. A developmental and survey research method was adopted in this study. 10 Arabic teachers and 10 Persian teachers filled out a scale. Findings of this study indicated that teachers of Al-’Arabiya Lale’alam and Mina series described both textbooks as appropriate textbooks. Al-’Arabiya Lale’alam was considered to be presenting decent grammatical lessons, vocabulary teaching, phonology and pronunciation. Mina was considered to be better in covering discourse issues, grading index, methods of teaching, methods of learning. Regarding formal writing and speaking indexes, the textbooks obtained the same ranks. Also, the content appears to be the more important in Arabic textbooks. The content analyses of the textbooks showed that communicative approach was followed in both textbook. In general, Al-’Arabiya Lale’alam received more positive comments and evaluation than Mina.