An evaluation of "Sunrise 9'' from EFL teachers' and students' perspectives in Northern Region of Iraq

Basically, textbook is one of the most essential parts in the process of teaching/learning all around the world, also there is debatable case about using and non-using a textbook in the first place in EFL program. Moreover, there are three basic components in EFL program including (teacher, student and textbook), but amongst them textbook plays a significant role in the process of English Language Teaching. It is one of the main crucial materials that have been using by students and the language teachers throughout the world. Additionally, educationalists claim that textbook is the heart of the English language classrooms. Some indisputably enunciated that textbooks guide teachers and facilitate the process of teaching and learning. In accordance with, the present study aims at evaluating SUNRISE 9 from teachers' and students' opinions and finding out whether there is a statistically significant difference between the teachers' and students' responses with regard to the strengths and weaknesses of the textbook which are used in language classrooms in all basic schools in the Northern Iraq. The findings reveal that the teacher participants have negative opinions towards most of the sections of the textbook and some others have not stated any opinions but the student participants generally have positive opinions about SUNRISE 9. Moreover, two data collection tools or/and instruments were carried out in the current study. Thus, the teachers' and students' opinions were conducted on SUNRISE 9, a student questionnaire and a teacher questionnaire. Furthermore, the evaluation of the textbook was carried out in terms of five criteria which include: the layout and design, activities, skills, language type, subject and content and conclusion. The quantitative data were obtained using questionnaire for teachers and students with a total number of 375 9th grade students and 40 9th grade teachers. They were chosen randomly from Sulaimanyah city in the North of Iraq. For the qualitative part of the study, semi-structured interviews were held among 13 teachers to gather more necessary data. The quantitative data obtained, were analysed using SPSS, a Statistical Program for Social Sciences. A five-point Likert type scale was used for analysis. To analyse the qualitative data, a deductive content analysis was employed. Keywords: Textbook, Evaluation, Textbook Evaluation, Material, Materials Evaluation