An Evaluation of Junior High School Grade Two Arabic Textbook Pictures based on Slough and McTigue Method

Graphic materials like pictures, charts, tables, maps, etc. used in educational books are important and effective methods of learning for all levels of students. Since such materials are highly effective, careful attention should be devoted to their selection. Some models are proposed for anlaysis of graphic materials one of which is the Slough and McTigue model. It has three bases, each with its own variants, upon which educational books could be analyzed. The first base  examines variants such as the relationship between the reader and the text and also the quantitative relationship between pictures and texts. The second base considers the three variants of combining colors, analyzing pictures with regard to their design, and matching pictures with their texts. Finally, the third base addresses factors such as the position of pictures and the texts with regard to each other, the title of pictures, and also the semantic relationship between the texts and the pictures. In this study, a descriptive method based on the Selog and McTigo model has been used to analyze the pictures in the Arabic books of the second grade of high school in the field of humanities. With regard to the relationship between the texts and the reader, the texts are mostly presented actively in these books because in most cases the author demands the students to participate in answering a question and gets more active in the process of learning. The other outcome of the evaluation of these books with respect to the first base is the number of pictures that are not in proportionate with the number of texts. As the number of pictures is more than texts, the process of learning is facilitated in these books. Evaluating these books with regard to the second base shows that pictures are mostly colorful. This factor could be really influential in motivating the students to study the books.Moreover, it was found that with regard to the categorization of the pictures, the authors have mostly used visual images in these books since they are really effective in conveying the message of each lesson and exerting attraction to the books. Pictures are also situated mostly beside the texts. Only in a few cases at the beginning of each lesson, they were situated on a separate page. In these few cases, the author has created a picture at the beginning of each lesson and then has followed that by a page that explains the picture so that the students’ minds are prepared to comprehend all the meanings and their relationships. This being the case, it is concluded that most of the pictures of these books are to convey the message of the text, even though, in a few cases, pictures are used to solely imply a point. As such, the author evades to directly refer to a picture or determine a title for the pictures.