Developing Criteria of Textbook Evaluation

Arranged To Fulfill Course Assignments Foundation of Textbook Analysis

Arranged by Group 5
Farras Ranti Damara 1911040339
M. Isdi Raflikansyah 1911040387
Nala Fauziah 1911040421
Putri Lestari 1911040172
Rafilda Hanifa 1911040447

Class 5 A
Lecture :
Fini Widya Fransiska, M.Pd

ENGLISH EDUCATION MAJOR

EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING FACULTY
RADEN INTAN ISLAMIC STATE UNIVERSITY OF LAMPUNG
2021

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE
PREFACE .............................................................................................................. ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... iii
CHAPTER ONE: PREVIEW ...............................................................................3
A. Background ..................................................................................................3
B. Formulation of the Problem .........................................................................3
C. Writing Purpose............................................................................................3

CHAPTER TWO : DISCUSSION........................................................................4

A. Importance of Textbook ...............................................................................4
B. What is Textbook Evaluation .......................................................................4
C. Determining Textbook Evaluation Criteria ..................................................6
D. Textbook Evaluation Checklist ....................................................................7
E. Developing Criteria of Textbook Analysis ................................................16
CHAPTER THREE : CONCLUSION ...............................................................21
A. Conclusion..................................................................................................21

REFRENCES ...........................................................................................................

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 CHAPTER I
PREVIEW
A. Background
In teaching learning process, textbook has an important role because it
leads. teachers in conveying materials to be taught over a period of time. Also, for
students, textbook make them easier to understand what are being taught. With
textbook, students can learn the lesson/topic at home. Regarding to the importance
of textbook, Cunningsworth as cited in Demir states that the roles of ELT course
book are serving to present the written and spoken materials, promoting
interaction, serving as reference of vocabulary and grammar, acting as a source
for classroom activities and offering self-access work or self-directed learning.
Textbook itself should be evaluated because of some reasons. Hutchinson
and Waters as cited in Ahour, Towhidiyan, and Sacidi say that the aim of textbook
evaluation is to determine the suitability of the materials to our particular
purpose". Cunningsworth cited in Alshehri argues that the reasons for evaluating
textbook are to adopt new course books, to find out the particular strengths and
weakness, and to aid in the development of teachers and provide insights into a
textbook's various components. Contrary to the both former experts. Tomlinson
says that why textbook should be evaluated because it provides teachers with
insights into the application of language theories.
B. Formulation of Problem
1. What is textbook evaluation?
2. What are criteria of textbook evaluation?
3. How to evaluate and selecting a good textbook?
C. Writing Purpose
1. Knowing what is textbook evaluation.
2. Knowing the criteria of textbook evaluation.
3. Knowing how to evaluate and selecting a good textbook.

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 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
A. Importance of Textbook
A textbook refers to a book which use in teaching and learning process by
teacher and students. According to Richards (2002), textbook is one of teaching
sources that is used to support learning through stimulating cognitive processes
and providing structure and progression for learners to follow Generally,
textbooks convey two important pedagogic functions: a curricular aspect, creating
a progression in a certain subject taught to students, and a conceptual aspect,
embodying the development of cognitive structures in the learner (Van Dormolen,
1986).
A textbook considered as important object in teaching and learning
process because:
1. Textbook is credible and reliable.
2. Textbook provides the guidelines for teacher and students.
3. Textbook is easy to use.
4. Textbook usually contains syllabus.

From those reasons above, we can take a conclusion that textbook is really
important in teaching and learning process. However, teacher should use
appropriate textbook in learning process. An appropriate textbook is a textbook
which contains criteria of a good textbook. Otherwise, teacher have to know how
to choose a good textbook in order to maximize the learning process. This course
will help teacher to analyze, choose, and evaluate a textbook.

B. What is Textbook Evaluation

Evaluation is a process of making opinion of amount, value, and quality of
something after thinking about it carefully. From the definition of evaluation, we
know that textbook evaluation is a process of examine a textbook by analyze it to
find whether a textbook is appropriate to use in teaching and learning process or
not.

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 According to Ansary and Babaii (2002) as teachers, many of us have had
the responsibility of evaluating textbooks. According to Sheldon (1988), we need
to evaluate textbooks for two reasons. First, the evaluation will help the teacher or
program developer in making decisions on selecting the appropriate textbook.
Furthermore, evaluation of the merits and demerits of a textbook will familiarize
the teacher with its probable weaknesses and strengths.
Cunningsworth (1995) and Ellis (1997) propose that textbook evaluation
can be of three types, namely:
1. Pre-use evaluation, or predictive, purposes helps teachers in selecting the
most appropriate textbook for a given language classroom by considering its
prospective performance.
2. In-use evaluation aids the teacher to explore the weaknesses or strengths of
the textbook while it is being used.
3. Post-use evaluation, or retrospective evaluation helps the teacher reflect on
the quality of the textbook after it has been used in a particular learning-
teaching situation.
In evaluating a textbook, we do not just read the book from the first until
last page, but we should find out the appropriateness of the book by analyze it. To
help the teacher evaluating a textbook, many researchers make a checklist which
we can use in evaluating a textbook.
A checklist is an instrument that helps practitioners in English Language
Teaching (ELT) evaluate language teaching materials, like textbooks. It allows a
more sophisticated evaluation of the textbook in reference to a set of generalizable
evaluative criteria. These checklists may be quantitative or qualitative.
Quantitative scales have the merit of allowing an objective evaluation of a given
textbook through Likert style rating scales (e.g., Skierso, 1991). Qualitative
checklists, on the other hand, often use open-ended questions to elicit subjective
information on the quality of course books (e.g., Richards, 2001). While
qualitative checklists are capable of an indepth evaluation of textbooks,
quantitative checklists are more reliable instruments and are more convenient to
work with, especially when team evaluations are involved.

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C. Determining Textbook Evaluation Criteria
English language teaching (ELT) material developers and evaluators need
to take a wide range of factors into consideration before they make decisions on
the materials they develop or select for particular contexts. Some of these factors
include the roles of the learner, teacher, and instructional materials as well as the
syllabus (Richards & Rodgers, 1987). In order to account for these roles
effectively, the evaluator must gain an awareness of the learner and teacher‟s
needs and interests (Bell & Gower, 1998).

According to McGrath, there are four advantages of checklist method as

follow.
• It is systematic, ensuring that all elements that are deemed to be
important are considered.
• It is effective, permitting a good deal of information to be recorded in
a relatively short space of time.
• The information is recorded in a convenient format, allowing for easy
comparison between competing sets of material.
• It is explicit, and, provided the categories are well understood by all
involved in the evaluation.

Evaluative criteria of checklists should be chosen according to the

learning-teaching context and the specific needs of the learner and teacher.
However, a review of the available checklists indicates that they have many
identical evaluative criteria regardless of the fact that they had been developed in
different parts of the world for different learning-teaching situations and purposes.
Most well-established checklists such as Cunningsworth and Kusel (1991) or
Skierso (1991) examine similar dimensions like physical attributes of textbooks
including aims, layout, methodology, and organization. Some other criteria that
are present in most checklists include the way language skills (speaking, listening,
etc.), subskills (grammar, vocabulary, etc.), and functions are presented in the
textbook depending on the present sociocultural setting.

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D. Textbook Evaluation Checklist
1) Tucker (1975)
Tucker divides his checklist into two main criteria. External criteria and
internal criteria, which is consists of 3 categories. The third categories of internal
criteria are pronunciation criteria, grammar criteria, and content criteria. The
special features of this checklist are:
a. Tucker uses terms value scale (importance in context) and merit scale
(quality) to assess the textbook.
b. Value scale range from 0-5 and merit scale range from 0-4.
c. The checklist has VMP (value merit product), the multiplication result of
VS and MS. The scores from multiplication not only an arithmetical total
but also a graph in which the actual and ideal profiles can be displayed.

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 2) Daoud and Celce-Murcia (1979)
Daoud and Celce-Murcia checklist for textbook evaluation consists of
five aspects. The first is subject matter, the second is vocabulary and structures,
the third is exercises, the fourth is illustrations, and the fifth is physical make-up.
The total items of the five aspects are 25.

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 3) Williams (1983)
David Williams is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Language Arts
Section in the Department of Education, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria. He
holds a doctorate in Education from the University of Malaya. His current
research interests include reading comprehension, the teaching of literature, and
attitudes towards varieties of spoken and written Nigerian English.
Williams splits his ELT textbook checklist into 7 criteria. The seventh
criteria are general, speech, grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, and technical.
The special features of his textbook checklist are:

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a. Column for weighting on the left of the checklist. Weighting
can be indicated by numbers or letters (e.g. 4: very useful, 3:
quite useful, 2: fairly useful, and 1: not so useful). This left
column can be used for weighting items according to their
usefulness in a particular second-language context, or at a
particular educational level.
b. The 5-point numerical rating scale on the right of the checklist.
It can be used for adapting evaluative items to suit the
particular demands of the teaching situation. The numbers
given in the right-hand column indicate the extent to which a
given textbook satisfies each criterion on the checklist.
c. Sets of criteria can be evolved for comparative evaluations by
multiplying the weighting of each item by the rating on each
item.

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 4) Sheldon (1988)
Sheldon designed his textbook checklist into 17 factors. The total items
of the seventeenth factors are 53. The special features of his checklist are: (1)
factual details (at the top of the checklist), (2) column comment for adding our
comment about each factor, and (3) column for rating, which can be scored with
pluses and minuses, or stars, etc.), but, in this article I use poor, fair, good, and
excellent for the rating scale. Sheldon textbook evaluation checklist can be seen as
follow.

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 5) Cunningsworth (1995)

Cunningsworth checklist for textbook evaluation consists of eight

aspects. They are aim and approaches, design and organization, language content,
skills, Topic, methodology, teachers’ books, and practical consideration. The total
items of the eighth aspects are 44. The special feature of his checklist is using
Yes/No questions.

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 E. Developing Criteria of Textbook Analysis
We have modified checklist models from those experts which we have
discussed previously to make this checklist model. This checklist model uses
qualitative scale which makes us easy to draw the conclusion about the book. We
adapted Sheldon’s assessment way which easiness way to help us know the
weaknesses and strengths about this book. The checklist model can be seen as
follows.

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 Textbook Evaluation Checklist
Title :
Author :
Publisher :
Number of pages :
Level :
Target learners :
Components : Answer key/Cassettes/Others
Evaluator :
Assessment: *Poor **Fair ***Good ****Excellent

No Items Rating
P F G E
Relation to Syllabus and Curriculum
1 Is the content graded according to the needs of the
students or the requirements of the existing syllabus?
2 Is the material accurate and up-to-date?
3 Has authenticity in language and style of writing.
4 Does the textbook take account of, and seem to be in
tune with, broader educational concerns?
5 Is the course book suited to the learning/teaching
situation?
6 How comprehensive is the course book? Does it cover
most of all of what is needed? Is it a good resource for
students and teachers?
Methodology
7 Is allowance made for the perspectives, expectations,
of non-native teachers?
8 Are the objectives spelt out?
9 How are the different skills taught?
10 To what extent has it realized its stated objectives?
11 Is the coursebook flexible? Does it allow different
teaching and learning styles?
12 What approach/approaches to language learning are
taken by the course book? Is this appropriate to the
learning/teaching situation?
13 How are communicative abilities developed?
14 Does the material include any advice/help to students
on study skills and learning strategies?
15 Is there material for integrated skill work?
16 Will the topics help expand students’ awareness and
enrich their experience?
Suitability for Learners
17 Does the subject matter cover a variety of topics
appropriate to the interests of the learners for whom the
text book is intended (urban or rural environment; child
or adult learners; male and/or female students)?
18 Does the vocabulary load (i.e., the number of new

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 words introduced every lesson) seem to be reasonable
for the students of that level?
19 Does the sentence length seem reasonable for the
students of that level?
20 Does the writer use current everyday language, and
sentence structures that follow normal word order?
21 Do illustrations create a favorable atmosphere for
practice in reading and spelling by depicting realism
and action?
22 Are the illustrations clear, simple, and free of
unnecessary details that may confuse the learner?
23 Is the material likely to be retained/ remembered by
learners?
24 Is the course material interactive, and are there
sufficient opportunities for the learner to use his or her
English so that effective consolidation takes place?
Physical and Utilitarian Attributes
25 Is the text attractive (i.e., cover, page appearance,
binding)?
26 Does the size of the book seem convenient for the
students to handle?
27 Is the type size appropriate for the intended learners?
28 Durability
29 Quality of editing and publishing
30 Price and value
31 Is up-to-date in the technical aspects of textbook
production and design?
32 Is it easy to obtain sample copies and support material
for inspection?
33 Can you contact the publisher’s representative in case
you want further information about the content,
approach, or pedagogical detail of the book?
34 Is the material clearly organized?
35 Can the students find their location in the material at
any point?
36 Are there indexes, vocabulary lists, section headings,
and other methods of signposting the content that allow
the student to use the material easily, especially for
revision or self-study purposes?
37 Is there space to write in the book?
38 Are the reference sections for grammar, etc.? Is some
of the material suitable for individual study?
Supplementary Materials
39 Is the book completing enough to stand on its own, or
must the teacher produce a lot of ancillary bridging
material to make it workable?
40 Availability of supplementary materials
Listening
41 Is listening material well recorded, as authentic as

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 possible, accompanied by background information,
questions, and activities which help comprehension?
Speaking
42 Is material for spoken English (dialogues, role plays,
etc.) well designed to equip learners for real-life
interactions?
43 Suggests ways of demonstrating and practicing speech
items.
Reading
44 Are there reading passages and associated activities
suitable for your students’ level, interests, etc.? Is there
sufficient reading material?
45 Demonstrates techniques for handling aspects of
reading skill (how to draw conclusion, how to find
main idea, etc.)
Writing
46 Relates written work to the pupils' age, interests, and
environment
47 Demonstrates techniques for handling aspects of
composition teaching.
Vocabulary
48 Presents vocabulary in appropriate contexts and
situations.
49 Is material for vocabulary teaching adequate in terms
of quantity and range of vocabulary, emphasis placed
on vocabulary development, strategies for individual
learning?
Grammar
50 Does the structure gradually increase in complexity to
suit the growing reading ability of the students?
51 Presents structure in appropriate contexts and levels.
Exercises
52 Do the exercises develop comprehension and test
knowledge of main ideas, details, and sequence of
ideas?
53 Do the exercises involve vocabulary and structures
which build up the learners’ repertoire?
54 Do the exercises provide practice in different types of
written work (sentence completion, spelling and
dictation, guided composition)?
55 Does the book provide a pattern of review within
lessons and cumulatively test new material?
56 Do the exercises promote meaningful communication
by referring to realistic activities and situations?

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 Conclusion
Sections Total Excellent Good Fair Poor Unavailable
Questions (4) (3) (2) (1)
Relation to Syllabus and Curriculum
Methodology
Suitability for Learners
Physical and Utilitarian Attributes
Supplementary Materials
Listening
Reading
Writing
Vocabulary
Grammar
Exercise

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 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion

Textbook evaluation is a process of examine a textbook by analyze it to

find whether a textbook is appropriate to use in teaching and learning process or
not.
Evaluative criteria of checklists should be chosen according to the
learning-teaching context and the specific needs of the learner and teacher. Most
well-established checklists such as Cunningsworth and Kusel (1991) or Skierso
(1991) examine similar dimensions like physical attributes of textbooks including
aims, layout, methodology, and organization. Some other criteria that are present
in most checklists include the way language skills (speaking, listening, etc.),
subskills (grammar, vocabulary, etc.), and functions are presented in the textbook
depending on the present sociocultural setting.
There are 5 scientists who suggest how to evaluate a textbook properly:
Tucker (1975), Daoud and Celce-Murcia (1979), Williams (1983), Sheldon
(1988), Cunningsworth (1995).

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 REFERENCES
Jusuf, Harni. 2018. THE MODELS OF CHECKLIST METHOD IN
EVALUATING ELT TEXTBOOKS. Journal al-Lisan, Vol. 3 (No.2).
Kayacan, Ibrahim. Textbook Evaluation Checklist.
Mukundan, Jayakaran, dkk.. 2011. Developing An English Language
Teaching Evaluation Checklist. Contemporary Issues In Education
Research, Vol. 4 (No. 6).
Affan Ramadhana, Muhammad. 2019. An Evaluation of English Language
Textbook: Interlanguage English for Senior High School Students.
Jurnal Studi Guru dan Pembelajaran, Vol. 2 (No. 1).
Akbar, Rizky. 2016. AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ELEVENTH GRADE
ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS. Journal of English and Education, Vol. 4
(No. 1), Hal. 109-126.

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