screening efl teachers' perception on 'prospect 3': the case of internal and external evaluation

Undergoing a paradigm shift from grammar translation method (gtm) to communicative language teaching (clt) since 2012, iran’s ministry of education has developed and published series titled 'prospect' which includes three consecutive textbooks designed for grades 7th, 8th and 9th of junior high school of iran. since, a key element of all educational programs are the textbooks the efficiency of which greatly contributes to the accomplishment of the pedagogical goals of the curriculum, this study aims to conduct internal and external evaluation over one of the series, namely 'prospect 3', in order to help material developers modify the aforementioned textbook and improve it through considering both experts' recommendations and from perspectives of the teachers who have been incorporating 'prospect 3' in their classrooms during the last 5 years. having developed a 55 five-point likert scale questionnaire by the researchers, the data was gathered from 23 female and 29 male english teachers who were teaching english in rural and urban junior high schools of mazandaran province, iran. the findings of this research reveals that iranian efl teachers are relatively satisfied with some aspects of 'prospect 3' and to some extent, it has met its pedagogical objectives. nonetheless, it is evaluated very poor in printing quality and does lack interesting and motivating pictures and illustrations. moreover, considering the needs of the learners as well as different learning styles, incorporating authentic language and variant dialects, and using specifically modern techniques such as typography and perceptual saliency to make the input more comprehensible for the learners are among other shortcomings that are in dire need of modification.