DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2019.887
title: Development of an evaluation checklist for English major's textbooks in an EFL context: focus on intercultural communicative competence

description: Textbook plays an essential role in the EFL classroom. Therefore, textbook evaluation is important for English teachers so that its pedagogical contribution to the teaching and learning process can be assured. In the EFL context in China, textbook evaluation is even more of an important issue because of the huge number of English major learners and the inclusion of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as a major teaching objective.The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a checklist for assessing English language textbooks for English major students in terms of ICC development. Specifically, it tried to examine whether the proposed checklist was useful in terms of validity, reliability, impact, and practicality, and to identify the criteria that were considered to be important in a checklist for evaluating English textbooks for English major students regarding students’ ICC development. The research process was divided into three stages: development stage, evaluation stage and improvement stage. In the development stage, a literature review and expert interviews were used to elicit information that was important and should be included in an evaluation checklist in terms of ICC development. Subsequently, the 1st version checklist was further refined into the 2nd version checklist through a validity examination with a group of EFL and native-speaker teachers in the field of English major teaching. In the evaluation stage, thirty EFL teachers used the 2nd version checklist to evaluate an English textbook currently used for English major students in the form of a field test, and then they were interviewed to find out their opinions on the usefulness of the checklist in terms of reliability, validity, impact, and practicality. In the improvement stage, the checklist was improved based on the comments made by the teachers in the field test, and a final checklist focusing on ICC development came into existence.The results showed that the checklist is of high usefulness in terms of validity, reliability, impact, and practicality. The surveys with the EFL teachers in the field test revealed supporting evidence for face and content validity. The reported Cronbach’s alpha showed that the inter-rater reliability for the whole checklist (α=0.956) and its two dimensions (α=0.935, and 0.968, respectively) were “excellent”, and that its eight subdimensions (0.731~0.934) were “acceptable” (0.80&gt;α≥0.7), “good”(0.90&gt;α≥0.8) or “excellent”(α≥0.9). An examination of the impact and practicality of the checklist also found positive results in that 86.7% of respondents were satisfied with the impact, and 86.6% of respondents were satisfied with the practicality of the checklist. In addition, the results showed that the checklist for evaluating textbooks in terms of ICC development includes the following criteria: two dimensions including “Overall quality” and “ICC attributes”; and eight subdimensions including “practicality”, “objectives”, “teaching aids”, “content”, “language skills”, “cultural topics”, “cultural information” and “cultural exercises and activities”.This study concludes that the developed checklist can serve as a useful tool for EFL teachers in the selection of English textbooks for English major students in developing students’ ICC and in the improvement of EFL teachers’ own ICC awareness.