Adopting appropriate textbook series for EFL communicative classroom:based on a comparison between AEF and FCs

Textbooks have always been considered an indispensible part of the EFL classroom and even ignoring their prominence after the teacher is a pernicious fallacy. They are inextricably linked to the teacher’s syllabus design and more precisely to what is practiced in an EFL classroom. A walk through the Iranian EFL market, one could find a plethora of options at disposal to accompany the learners in their way acquiring the lingua franca, English as a foreign language. Since the year dot Interchange series has been dominating the realm of English teaching and learning; the time has now come for a change for better. As already lurking in the argument, this descriptive-comparative study is an enthusiastic attempt in order to provide a handful of essential guidelines on adopatation and adaptation of an appropriate textbook for a true communicative EFL class; and to shed searing light on the pros and cons of the selected series.A checklist comprising 40 items and a total of 10 sections, each devoted to an aspect of each textbook evaluation-comparison, was administrated amongst 10 teachers with at least a year of experience teaching at least one textbook from the series. The checklist was also passed to two expertise claimed to be the series’ presenters in Iran. The results of our thorough examination taken from the checklists revealed that both textbooks are very much geared to take the students from A1 to B2 (Four Corners) and C1 (American English File) benefiting from technology plus the revised forms of previous teaching material. However, they both suffer from a number of drawbacks. Having in mind all the shortcomings with respect to the Iranian EFL context, it was concluded that American English File is a more appropriate textbooks in meeting Iranian EFL learners’ needs not only for a wider range of activities, but also for having more stress on pronunciation. Moreover, in addition to its overall contributions on the learners’ communicative skills it provides teachers with more guidelines as how to proceed. It is also worth noting that American English File teacher’s book is available in a decent version.

کلیدواژه ها:

EFL ، CLT ، Checklist ، Four Corners ، American English File