Teachers’ Evaluation and Perceptions on Adaptation of Sunrise Coursebook at Sulaymaniyah Governorate in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

This study aims to discover if Sunrise coursebook (levels 7, 8, and 9) could fulfill the Kurdistan’s Ministry of Educations requirements. What is teacher’s perceptions about different elements for this coursebook in these three levels. Also, This research by utilizing some specific attempts to discover possible weak points of Sunrise in the basic levels 7, 8, and 9, and whether teachers do any adaptation during their classes. If they do, what kind of adaptations do they do and how they do it? It seeks to know whether teachers do it in correct and authentic ways. For this study mixed methods are used (qualitative and quantitative), mixed method has been used for approaching the result and getting a positive outcome. The instruments used in this study are a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The questionnaire in this study was designed by Litz (2005). The questionnaire is categorized in a number of essential elements such as practical consideration, layout and design, activities, skills, language type, and the last one is subject and contents. For each category there are some questions. Regarding the semi-structured interview, the questions were adapted from (Nguyen, 2015). Participants of this study are teachers who have taught or are teaching (levels 7, 8, and 9) of Sunrise coursebook. The participants are from Sulaymaniyah Governorate in Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). In the pilot test, 35 English teachers participated. In the real data collection 70 English teachers participated in the questionnaire while 20 English teachers participated in the interview. iv The findings of this study showed that this coursebook is suitable for these three levels and the teachers were happy with using this coursebook. Their responses to the questions indicate that appropriateness of Sunrise for these three levels is high. Also, the results show that the teachers’ perceptions about each essential element were positive. In addition, all the teachers do adaptation but in different degree; some of them just use one or two types of adaptation just because of the limited time they have in their class but some other teachers apply almost all kinds of adaptations. Finally, the results show that there is a positive relation between experience and adaptation, such that those teachers who have more experience adapt more during their classes. The present study has some practical implications. The outcomes of this study may provide useful feedback to teachers who use Sunrise and help them know more about the strengths and weaknesses of Sunrise. It may also help them to find better ways of adapting it. Meanwhile, the results may help Kurdistan’s Ministry of Education to review and improve Sunrise.