A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE IN THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS: DEVELOPMENT OF A CHECKLIST

The current study aims to prepare a checklist for teachers and researchers in order to analyze English as a second or foreign language textbooks from a sociolinguistic perspective. There is no checklist or framework for English textbooks to be evaluated concerning the sociolinguistics issues. After obtaining expert opinion and a piloting on eight textbooks used in state schools in Turkey, a checklist consisting ۶ criteria was suggested. Then, the check list was applied on the ۹th grade English book to demonstrate how the checklist can be utilized. The findings show that from a sociolinguistic perspective, the book in focus occasionally conforms to the sociolinguistic concerns while it needs some qualitative improvements. The textbook should pay more attention to the linguistic ecology and adjust its contents so as to compensate for the foreign language status of English. This study contributes to the literature by providing a checklist to evaluate textbooks systematically with regard to essential sociolinguistic issues and it demonstrates the application of the checklist.

Keywords:

Sociolinguistic textbook evaluation , English textbooks , intercultural communicative competence , English language teaching.