Elham Khosravian - M.A. student of TEFL, Shiraz University
Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo - Professor, TEFL, Shiraz University

Textbook evaluation is an essential attempt to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the materials that should be taken into account. The current study is a survey to determine the Iranian EFL teachers and students viewpoints regarding the newly developed English textbooks of 7th and 8th grades. Also, the difference between theviewpoints of male and female learners were examined in this study. For this purpose to be achieved, 100 Iranian EFLmale and female students as well as 50 Iranian EFL teachers were randomly recruited. Alamri’s (2008) developedquestionnaire with 12 categories and 63 subcategories was used as the instrument to evaluate the two English textbooks used in the 7th and 8th grades for Iranian secondary schools, namely Prospect 1 and Prospect 2. The findings showed nostatistically significant difference between the viewpoints of teachers and students in this regard. In addition, the resultsof the study indicated that male and female EFL learners hold similar viewpoints about the textbooks under investigation. It was also found that General Appearance of the newly developed textbooks was the most outstanding and the most favorable attribute for both EFL learners and teachers. Topic content was found to be the least favorable attribute of these textbooks for EFL learners while for EFL teachers the accompanying materials were the least favorable one.

textbook, evaluation, 7th grade, 8th grade, Prospect 1, Prospect 2