Evaluating Passages 1 and First Certificate Textbooks: A Discourse Perspective

Adopting the critical discourse analysis framework, in general, andFairclough’s (1989) critical text analysis, in particular, the current study aims atexamining 3 aspects of meaning, namely social relations, subject positions, andcontents in the conversation as well as vocabulary and grammar parts of Passages 1(an American textbook) and First Certificate (a British textbook) to find out whetherthere would be any discernable differences between these 2 instructional textbooks.To evaluate the textbooks, content analysis was employed. The results revealed thatthe primary emphasis of both ELT textbooks was on the cooperative learning.Additionally, in both textbooks, social relations were mostly equal, andconversations often took place between a male and a female with equal social statusand power. Regarding subject positions, the data analysis showed that Passages 1favored friends social relation, whereas TV reporting was the dominant socialrelation in First Certificate. Besides, Passages 1 mostly focused on uncontroversialissues, whereas First Certificate concentrated on controversial and market-orientedtopics more than Passages 1. After all, both these textbooks tended to represent thediscourse and culture of Western countries, which can exert specific ideologies onlanguage learners.