Developing Criteria of Textbook Evaluation

Arranged To Fulfill Course Assignments Foundation of Textbook Analysis

Arranged by Group 5
Farras Ranti Damara
Nala Fauziah
M. Isdi Raflikansyah
Putri Lestari
Rafilda Hanifa

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....................................................................6
E. ........................................................................................................................

CHAPTER THREE : CONCLUSION...................................................................

A. Conlusion.......................................................................................................

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 and characteristic of good textbook?
3. How to evaluate and selecting a good textbook?
C. Writing Purpose
1. Students of Teacher Education know how to choose a good textbook for
their student.
2. Knowing the criteria of good textbook and how to use it effectively.

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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).
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.
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) 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:
1) 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.
2) 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

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 the extent to which a given textbook satisfies each criterion on the
checklist.
3) 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

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