High Schools or Private Institutes Textbooks? Which Fulfill Communicative Language Teaching Principles in the Iranian Context?
High Schools or Private Institutes Textbooks? Which Fulfill Communicative Language Teaching Principles in the Iranian Context?
Keywords: Materials Development, Textbooks, Textbook Evaluation, Communicative Language Ability, CLT, EFL Institutes
Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo
Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Bio Data
Seyyed Ayatollah Razmjoo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Shiraz University, Shiraz. He received his BA, MA and Ph.D from Shiraz University. His areas of interest are Testing, Research, Materials Development and Teaching Methodology. He has taught courses related to the same fields to English students. He has published more than 10 books and articles. His books include Fundamental Concepts in Linguistics, Fundamental Concepts in Research Methods and Fundamental Foundations in TEFL: Classified Tests and Concepts.
The Communicative Approach in language teaching originates from the purpose of language as communication. According to this model, the main objective of communicative language teaching (CLT) is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as “communicative competence.” The work of Canale and Swain is an expansion of Hymes’ model which attempts to determine the feasibility and practicality of developing what we shall call the communicative competence of students” (Canale and Swain, 1980, p.1). Accordingly, Bachman s framework (1990) is an extension of earlier models in that it attempts to characterize the processes by which the various components interact with each other and with the context in which language use occurs (Bachman, 1990, p.81). The literature on language teaching suggests that the amount of use of CLT principles in EFL/ESL textbooks varies depending on how the textbook designers and developers conceptualize the principles. As far as the researcher knows, no study has been done on the amount of represention of CLT principles in high school and private institute textbooks. Because textbooks play a pivotal role in the realm of language teaching and learning and they are looked upon as an indispensable vehicle for foreign language learning, this study aimed at investigating the extent to which the Iranian high school and private institute textbooks represent the CLT principles. To this end, the textbooks of the Iranian high schools and private institutes were analyzed descriptively and inferentially. The analysis of the data indicated that while high school textbooks are not conductive to CLT implementation, private institute textbooks represent the CLT principles to a great extent.
See pages 126-140
[/private]Category: Main Editions, Volume 9 Issue 4
