Students' and instructors' evaluation of a foreign language textbook from an intercultural perspective

Abstract

As teachers primarily rely on textbooks in the teaching of foreign languages, one way of helping and encouraging them to focus on intercultural competence (IC) is to provide them with the textbooks that facilitate intercultural language learning process. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the New Language Leader Pre-intermediate textbook from an intercultural perspective. This evaluation was primarily based on 132 students' and 15 instructors' perceptions of the textbook after they used it for two months in language classrooms at a preparatory school of a state university. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire adopted from a previous study. Data analysis was conducted with the help of SPSS 20.0. Descriptive Statistics was run to identify the frequencies and mean scores. Mann-Whitney U test was used to discover any possible significant difference in students' and instructors' perspectives. The results indicated that although most of the IC components such as knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and linguistic means existed in the textbook according to the participants, the extent of the representation of these in the textbook varied. Whereas the aims and goals of the textbook were thought to be in accordance with the conceptual framework of the students to a large extent, both students and instructors indicated that it did not provide much insight into learners' own culture. Considering the findings, the stakeholders might have necessary revisions on the textbook and instructors might adapt some resources to fulfil the needs of their learners in the development of IC in similar contexts.