An Evaluation of American English File Series

Textbooks play a pivotal role in language learning classrooms. The problem isthat among a wide range of textbooks in market which is appropriate for a specificclassroom and a group of learners. In order to evaluate ELT textbooks theoristsand writers have offered different kinds of evaluative frameworks based on anumber of principles and criteria. This study evaluates a series of ELT textbook,namely, American English File by the use of Littlejohn’s (1998) evaluativeframework to see what explicit features of the book are, what pedagogic values ithas, whether it is in line with its claimed objectives, and what its merits anddemerits are. Littlejohn believes that we should evaluate a textbook based on itsown pedagogic values and we should see what is in it not what teacher andevaluators think must exist in it. Consequently his framework is claimed to bedevoid of any impressionistic ideas and it is in-depth and objective rather thanbeing subjective. Nine ELT experts and ten ELT teachers helped the researcherrate the evaluative checklists. The results of the study show that although anumber of shortcomings and drawbacks were found in American English File, itstood up reasonably well to a detailed and in-depth analysis and that its pedagogicvalues and positive attributes far out-weighed its shortcomings. The internalconsistency between ratings was computed via the statistical tool of Cronbach’salpha that indicated a desirable inter-rater reliability.