AN EVALUATION OF ACADEMIC WRITING TEXTBOOK FROM LECTURERS’ PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Textbook plays important roles in the teaching and learning process because it can be the guidelines and sources for both students and lecturers. Lecturers have to evaluate the appropriateness of the textbook before using it. This study aimed to explore the appropriateness of textbooks for teaching writing for college. The descriptive qualitative research was used and eleven English lecturers in the English education study program, South Sumatera province, Indonesia was taken as the sample of the study. The book entitled “Writing Academic English” written by Oshima and Hogue was evaluated based on an evaluation scale refers to Litz (2005) that contains 19 items and relies upon four main criteria namely a) layout and design, b) subject and content, c) activities and d) skills. The result of this study showed that the “Writing Academic English” textbook could be used for teaching writing based on the recent curriculum that also represents the characteristics of each institution to meet the students’ needs, and conditions. In conclusion, a good textbook contains an organized layout, useful and real-life subjects, and contents, covers relevant skills and activities, and corresponds to lecturers’ and learners' emerging needs.