Evaluation of Iranian High School and Pre-University English Text Books Based on Cultural and Religious Perspectives

This study aimed to shed new lights on Iranian high school English textbook evaluation from both cultural and religious perspectives. Adopting a qualitative analysis, cultural and religious items were investigated by looking at different aspects of visual elements, gender representation, syntax, and discourse. The results of the present study indicated a great reflection of Islamic Republic of Iran’s cultural and religious attitudes and values in high school English textbook. In addition, the religious standpoint of the country, as an undisputed subcategory of Iranian culture, were shown to be represented through visual elements and contents. Regarding gender representation, findings showed that there was a tendency toward a more balanced gendered depiction of both males and females in these English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructional materials. Despite the dominancy of Islamic republic of Iran’s cultural discourse in the high school English textbooks, the results revealed some shortcomings of the contents in representing well-developed contextualized and communicative instructional materials. This study can add to the literature on textbook evaluation by attracting the materials developers and textbook writers’ attention to these aspects of enquiry so as to further improve the quality of Iranian high school English textbooks

Keywords:

EFL high school textbooks , culture , religion , discourse , visual elements , gender representation