• Mohammad Zohrabi

  Author

• Hossein Sabouri

  Author

• Marzie Kheradmand

  Author

Textbooks play a pivotal role in language classrooms and educational
systems all over the world. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate and
compare two English textbooks, Interchange 1 (Richards et al., 2005) and English
Book 1 of Iranian high schools (Birjandy et al., 2011) in order to illustrate their
probable similarities and differences in terms of content, vocabulary, grammar,
reading exercises and activities, pronunciation practice, physical makeup, and
language functions. For this purpose, the weaknesses and strengths of these English
textbooks are explained using eight criteria which have been drawn from various
checklists. Since these two English textbooks are compared and contrasted according
to these specific criteria, data collection are exploratory involving qualitative data
which were analyzed interpretively. Although each one of these books has its own
merits and demerits, overall the findings revealed that English book 1, in comparison
with Interchange 1, is more grammar-based and does not satisfy Iranian students’
needs in the real world, moreover it is not compatible with the principles of
communicative language teaching. It is argued that the writers of this book had better
modify it by employing more communicative tasks to satisfy Iranian students’ needs
and wants.

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