Authenticity of Discourse Markers and Features in Iranian School English Textbooks

A carefully-constructed discourse is requisite for acquainting learners with a native-like lingual situation. The present study sought to appraise three locally-made EFL textbook series, prescribed by the Ministry of Education in Iran for the school students, in respect of their discourse features to ascertain the extent to which these course-books enable the foreign language learners to achieve pragmatic competence. The content analysis was built mainly on the framework developed by Carter and McCarthy (2006) and Cutting (2011). The post-use evaluation of 21 dialogues incorporated in the course-books divulged that they were satisfactory at living up to the provision of sufficient instances of discourse markers but showcasing them in a hackneyed and iterative motif and in a cursory and hasty tempo. Situational ellipsis, as the most salient feature of the spoken discourse, was sparsely evidenced and for some discourse markers a one-off insertion of their instances was witnessed. Results of this study have some practical implications and suggestions for language teachers and textbook developers.