visual elements used in iran efl high school textbooks

the present study investigates the central concerns of the use of visuals within the four efl textbooks taught at iranian high schools which have been prescribed by the ministry of education. to do this, the four efl textbooks were evaluated and analyzed. descriptive statistics were used to analyze data quantitatively. the analysis indicated that over the four textbooks, 95.71 percent of all visuals were drawings and 4.29 percent were photos. the analysis revealed, then, among three fundamental categories of pictures function (i.e. illustrative, stimulus-response, and student-generated), stimulus-response pictures constituted the largest percentage (70.50%) which tend to focus on low-level language skills; illustrative pictures constituted 29.49%, while none of them were used for the student-generated purposes. the visuals, furthermore, were largely being used for fairly grammatical part of language practice (87.45%). moreover, all the pictures within each of the four textbooks under consideration were used for the purpose of 'talking about a picture'; no exercises were found to meet the 'talking with the picture' criterion. findings of the study pedagogically call for using appropriate pictures of real people and real environment which provide sufficient input for language learners