AN EVALUATION OF AN ESP TEXTBOOK FROM LECTURERS’ PERSPECTIVES: THE CASE OF ENGLISH FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES BOOK

There are spate studies on evaluating ready-made English books in EFL context. In contrast,evaluating English for Specific Purposes (ESP) books particularly developed by an institution for its own teaching purposes seems to be under-researched. This article describes a study of an ESP textbook evaluation from lecturers’ perspectives. It reports a research in which 25 ESP lecturers at Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri (STAIN) Kediri were asked to evaluate English for Islamic Studies book used in English Application Program at STAIN Kediri using a survey questionnaire adapted from Mukundan, Hajimohammadi, and Nimehchisalem (2011) and Alamri (2008). Nine categories were proposed, namely suitability to learners, teachability, physical and utilitarian attributes, tasks, reading, vocabulary, grammar, speaking and writing. The result of descriptive statistics indicated that the lecturers were highly satisfied with the book only in three categories (grammar, speaking and writing). The rest categories suffer from a number of weak points which require awareness and consideration not only by the lecturers but also both the textbook developers and the institution. The result of this study cannot be generalized to other ESP textbooks. However, it provides information that evaluating self-designed textbook is essential for the improvements