A Comparative Study of Two Widely Used ESP Books for Nursing Students Published by Oxford University Press and SAMT (Oxford English for Careers: Nursing 1 vs. English for the Students of Nursing)

Book evaluation is considered a prerequisite to developing or republicating educational books. Therefore, utilizing an evaluation checklist, 12 university professors, selected through purposive and convenience sampling, evaluated two ESP books in nursing, published by Oxford University Press and SAMT. The findings of the qualitative analysis revealed that the book published by SAMT, no longer seems suitable for today's students. Quantitative analysis indicated that Mean score given to SAMT’s book was significantly lower than Oxford’s. Despite the lack of visual appeal and audio-video files, little variety in the teaching and testing methods, with the old reading-oriented approach, without paying attention to phonetics and grammatical issues, and being far from the language teaching theories, this book has recently been republished for the nineteenth time. Although the problems underlined in SAMT’s book are not observed in the Oxford’s, this book is not error-free, either. It does not fully meet the needs of Iranian students since its major focus is on language use in the careerrelated contexts with an equal attention to all skills. This comparison can help the authors and syllabus designers in the field of nursing to prepare, compile, and edit books, using the strengths of the existing books.