content analysis of current efl textbooks used in iranian language institutes

The quality of textbooks has become a subject of debate in many english language teaching (elt) discussions. teachers and learners as well as materials developers claim that the textbooks still have contributions to make and a role to play in the field of elt and their role is vital. iranian english language learners and teachers are tackling a plethora of problems when international english materials (textbooks) are welcomed to use without considering the target purpose of language learners. the objective of this study was to gain insights into the quality of textbooks through content analysis in iranian efl institutes. the researcher compared typical foreign language textbooks with three iranian evaluators. while this study did identify disconcerting problems with the four textbooks, the results of checklists seemed to demonstrate that new interchange and new english file actually stood up reasonably well to a systematic in-depth analysis and that the positive attributes far outweighed the negative characteristics.