Gender Representation in ILI English Textbooks of Iran Language Institute

Gender Representation in ILI English Textbooks of Iran Language Institute

Teaching English as a global language has been wide spread in recent years and commercial materials such as text books are the main recourses which remarkably influence the learner’s opinions and attitudes toward social and cultural issues. Research about ELT materials is required from different aspects, gender evaluation is one of which this paper intended to investigate. This study aimed to research how gender is represented in ILI English series of Elementary, Pre intermediate and Intermediate levels which are taught at Iran’s language institute. Gender was analyzed in the dialogs of these series according to Fairclough s (2001) three-dimensional model called relations, positions and content in six separate tables. The findings provide numbers of occurrences based on the equal and unequal relations, number of occurrences between genders in a general way, specification of the context of dialog according to male and female characters and the analysis of content was more challenging and displayed important results in our research. The results exposed that how these series have an absolute male biased perspective in their compilation, which is against of the necessity of Islamic culture, to keep equality between genders, to be applied in pedagogy of Iran. Female characters are more engaged in family and domestic related dialogs. On the other hand, men are presented in more social and occupational dialogs, but it can be claimed that male character engagement is over generalized. The consequences of this result may lead to great problems in pedagogy and behavioral manners of learners. The patriarchal ways of editors of this series, which are clearly represented through numbers and percents in tables, are challenged rightfully by feminist and humanistic views and further recommendations are presented in order to improve the basis of dialogs.

Teaching English as a global language has been wide spread in recent years and commercial materials such as text books are the main recourses which remarkably influence the learner’s opinions and attitudes toward social and cultural issues. Research about ELT materials is required from different aspects, gender evaluation is one of which this paper intended to investigate. This study aimed to research how gender is represented in ILI English series of Elementary, Pre intermediate and Intermediate levels which are taught at Iran’s language institute. Gender was analyzed in the dialogs of these series according to Fairclough s (2001) three-dimensional model called relations, positions and content in six separate tables. The findings provide numbers of occurrences based on the equal and unequal relations, number of occurrences between genders in a general way, specification of the context of dialog according to male and female characters and the analysis of content was more challenging and displayed important results in our research. The results exposed that how these series have an absolute male biased perspective in their compilation, which is against of the necessity of Islamic culture, to keep equality between genders, to be applied in pedagogy of Iran. Female characters are more engaged in family and domestic related dialogs. On the other hand, men are presented in more social and occupational dialogs, but it can be claimed that male character engagement is over generalized. The consequences of this result may lead to great problems in pedagogy and behavioral manners of learners. The patriarchal ways of editors of this series, which are clearly represented through numbers and percents in tables, are challenged rightfully by feminist and humanistic views and further recommendations are presented in order to improve the basis of dialogs.