The Criteria of a Good Textbook for English Language Major

The importance of book as an inseparable ingredient of education is not overlooked.‎ However, a book will be useful and effective when it meets acceptable criteria. This inquiry aimed at redefining and representing the criteria for a comprehensive university textbook offered for English major, as well as evaluating a set of specialized English university textbook published by prestigious Iranian and international publishers on the basis of the presented criteria. To do so, one title from each certain domestic and international publishers was chosen; the domestic publishers were SAMT, Payame Noor University, Khate sefid, Rahnama, and Zabankhadeh; and the international publishers were Oxford University Press, Cambridge, Routledge, Blackwell, and Longman. Relying on content analysis, 20 research experts judged the selected books. The validity and reliability of the research instrument were reported at an acceptable level (Creswell, 2007). The assessments revealed that generally the books by international publishers, compared to the books by domestic publishers, were more compatible with the criteria presented in this research. Although domestic books were in tandem with the framework of an acceptable university textbook, there were inadequacies in them that were presented at the end of this paper. The findings demand domestic publishers to pay more attention to improve qualitative level and content quality of specialized books for English major.