A.

Importance of Textbook
A textbook refers to a book which use in teaching and learning process by
teacher and students. According to Richards (2002), textbook is one of teaching
sources that is used to support learning through stimulating cognitive processes
and providing structure and progression for learners to follow Generally,
textbooks convey two important pedagogic functions: a curricular aspect, creating
a progression in a certain subject taught to students, and a conceptual aspect,
embodying the development of cognitive structures in the learner (Van Dormolen,
1986).
A textbook considered as important object in teaching and learning
process because:
1. Textbook is credible and reliable.
2. Textbook provides the guidelines for teacher and students.
3. Textbook is easy to use.
4. Textbook usually contains syllabus.
From those reasons above, we can take a conclusion that textbook is really
important in teaching and learning process. However, teacher should use
appropriate textbook in learning process. An appropriate textbook is a textbook
which contains criteria of a good textbook. Otherwise, teacher have to know how
to choose a good textbook in order to maximize the learning process. This course
will help teacher to analyze, choose, and evaluate a textbook.
B. What is Textbook Evaluation
Evaluation is a process of making opinion of amount, value, and quality of
something after thinking about it carefully. From the definition of evaluation, we
know that textbook evaluation is a process of examine a textbook by analyze it to
find whether a textbook is appropriate to use in teaching and learning process or
not.
According to Ansary and Babaii (2002) as teachers, many of us have had
the responsibility of evaluating textbooks. According to Sheldon (1988), we need
to evaluate textbooks for two reasons. First, the evaluation will help the teacher or
program developer in making decisions on selecting the appropriate textbook.
Furthermore, evaluation of the merits and demerits of a textbook will familiarize
the teacher with its probable weaknesses and strengths.
Cunningsworth (1995) and Ellis (1997) propose that textbook evaluation
can be of three types, namely:
1. Pre-use evaluation, or predictive, purposes helps teachers in selecting
the most appropriate textbook for a given language classroom by
considering its prospective performance.
2. In-use evaluation aids the teacher to explore the weaknesses or
strengths of the textbook while it is being used.
 3. Post-use evaluation, or retrospective evaluation helps the teacher
reflect on the quality of the textbook after it has been used in a
particular learning-teaching situation.
In evaluating a textbook, we do not just read the book from the first until
last page, but we should find out the appropriateness of the book by analyze it. To
help the teacher evaluating a textbook, many researchers make a checklist which
we can use in evaluating a textbook.
A checklist is an instrument that helps practitioners in English Language
Teaching (ELT) evaluate language teaching materials, like textbooks. It allows a
more sophisticated evaluation of the textbook in reference to a set of generalizable
evaluative criteria. These checklists may be quantitative or qualitative.
Quantitative scales have the merit of allowing an objective evaluation of a given
textbook through Likert style rating scales (e.g., Skierso, 1991). Qualitative
checklists, on the other hand, often use open-ended questions to elicit subjective
information on the quality of course books (e.g., Richards, 2001). While
qualitative checklists are capable of an indepth evaluation of textbooks,
quantitative checklists are more reliable instruments and are more convenient to
work with, especially when team evaluations are involved.

C. Determining Textbook Evaluation Criteria

D. Textbook Evaluation Checklist
E. Developing Criteria of Textbook Analysis