High School English Textbooks Content Analysis Based on Students’ Needs

Evaluating existing programs could help material developers and teachers understand students’ needs and make future improvements. This study investigated English textbooks for high school students in Iran, moving from explaining objective facts about the context to a subjective analysis of expectations and needs based on the assessment framework of Littlejohn (2011). This framework draws subjective conclusions about the adequacy of context. To assess the educational value of textbooks, a school board consisted of the first researcher in the study and four of her colleagues who had experience teaching English in high schools. The results showed that the material needs to be adapted to the intended use of the situation. This should include both public and design-oriented aspects of the material. Some of the criteria that make up the publication element of material (physical layout, path, and continuity of the printed material) are consistent with what the teacher expects from the material that is desirable for a particular person. However, in most cases, partial discrepancies (access, location of material in the set, division of sections into subsections) or significant discrepancies (a division of the entire material) may encourage textbook developers to start revision projects based on the results of this study.