The Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of"Top Notch" Course Books As Perceived by Iranian EFL Learners and Teachers

Abstract

It's uncommon to see a course book that genuinely is a precious stone; it's important
not just judge a book by its attractive cover. Books loaded with useful information will help
anyone improve their daily outlook. The present study was accompanied to evaluate the EFL
course book "Top Notch" series in two levels of intermediate and upper-intermediate being
presently taught in various English language centers in Iran. The researcher used a
retrospective mixed-methodology research design both quantitative and qualitative to evaluate
the course books, which includes interviews and questionnaires. For this purpose the five Likert
points of Litz’s questionnaires (2005) was employed on the basis of the students' and instructors'
answers. To do so, one hundred two EFL teachers and one hundred eighty students appraised
the series. Cronbach's Alpha 0.875 and 0.884 were complemented to estimate the reliability of
the students and instructors questionnaire respectively. The results obtained from the study
identified that Top Notch series suffers from the insufficient and inadequate exercises for
vocabulary, the unrelated topics, diverse pronunciations, not good for self-learning, and the
shortage of specific reading strategy such as skimming, scanning in Top Notch series is evident.
Furthermore, the upshots acquired from this probe showed that the current English textbooks
based on students' perception are meet the students' needs and interests in improving their
English language ability.