Evaluation of the reading texts in teenwise 9: A textbook written in accordance with the new elt program of Turkish National Education

This study aimed to investigate the appropriateness of the reading texts in Teenwise 9 according to students' perspectives based on content, exploitability, readability, and authenticity through a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. In addition, students' attitudes towards English classes and their perceptions towards four language skills were investigated. The sample of this study consisted of 9th-grade high school students from a total of three high schools in Ankara, including Mehmet Emin Resulzade Anatolian High School, Ayrancı Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, and Eryaman Şehit Okan Koç Anatolian Religious Vocational High School. This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed method design which includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. In this context, the opinions of 300 students studying in three different schools were received through a questionnaire. In addition, a total of 30 students, 10 from each school, were interviewed. To analyze the quantitative data, the data set was examined and the answers of 300 students were transferred to SPSS 23.0 program. First, the frequency and percentage values were calculated. Then, the chi square statistic was calculated to determine whether the students' views show a significant difference according to their school type, gender and age. The analysis of the responds of the students to the interview form was conducted with content analysis. First, the main categories for the views were formed, then the sub-categories were determined, and frequency and percentage values were calculated. In addition, the answers of the students were evaluated according to the type of school they study. Some of the results were as follows: 1. In total, 40% (n=12) of the participating students like English classes, 33,3% (n=10) do not like them while 26,7% (n=8) partially like the classes. 2. Among the four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), participants think the productive skills (speaking and writing) are the most difficult. 76,7 % (n=23) of the students find speaking difficult and 73,7% (n=22) state that writing is difficult. As for the receptive skills (reading and listening), 40% (n=12) think reading is difficult, and finally 26,7 % (n=8) think listening is a difficult skill. 3. Regarding the students' opinions about the content of the reading texts, more than 52% of the students agree that they enjoy reading them, but only 27,7 % say the texts make them want to read to find out more about the topics. 4. Participating students tend to agree with the statements regarding the exploitability of the reading texts. Most of them agree that the reading texts allow them to identify meaning of unknown words from context and without the help of a dictionary, and new words are repeated in the subsequent chapters. However, results also indicate that there are significant differences between the school types. 5. According to questionnaire results, Anatolian High School students tend to think that the reading texts were easy and did not include many new words or complex sentences. They also wish to learn more new words at this stage. The interview results supported the quantitative data. Anatolian Religious Vocational High School students have the most negative opinions about the readability of the texts. They think the texts are difficult, include too many new words and long sentences. Finally, according to the quantitative data, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School students seem to have no problem with the readability of the texts, however during the interviews, most of them did not state any opinions about it. 6. Both the quantitative and qualitative data collected from Anatolian High School students reflect that they generally do not find Teenwise 9 texts authentic. Anatolian Religious Vocational High School students, on the other hand, tend to agree with the statements related to authenticity. The findings of the interviews supported those of the quantitative. According to the questionnaire results, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School students thought the text were authentic the most. However, the qualitative data did not support the quantitative data, as most students stated that the reading texts were unrelated to real life. Keywords: textbook evaluation, reading text evaluation