EVALUATING A READING TEXTBOOK: SELECT READINGS

Coursebook appraisal is essential to fully understand the content and style of a book, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, so that the book can be adapted to suit factors such as course aims, student needs and teacher beliefs. In this paper, first, the literature on the subject of materials evaluation is discussed. Then by applying Cunningsworth’s (1984) checklist a detailed evaluation of the coursebook Select Readings: Upper-intermediate (Bernard & Lee, 2004) is provided. The results indicate that this book is specifically strong in providing various authentic, interesting, and motivating topics of different genres. However, it is weak in the number and type of activities, recycling of the new words and the way grammar is presented.