An evaluation on the content completion of English textbook for the seventh graders entitled “English Ways”

Textbook plays an important role in the teaching-learning activity. It functions as guidance for teacher in making the objective of the study and developing the learning activities. However, not all textbooks possess good quality, especially English textbook. In Indonesia for instance, each school may use different English textbook that suits the students’ need and capability. In this paper, the writer would like to evaluate the English textbook used by SMP Santo Yosef entitled “English Way”. The writer used the theory developed by Ochsendorf, Chen Deprey, Lopez, Roudebush, Lynch, and Pyke (2003); and Hycroft (1998; Cunningsworth (1995); Richards (2001); Brazil et al. (1980); and Levis (1999)on how to evaluate the textbook and the criteria of a good textbook as the fundamental theory of evaluating the textbook and developing the checklist. The checklist used in this paper was also adapted from several checklists of evaluating textbook developed by Miekley (2005); and Zahan and Begum (2013). The writer then distributed the checklists to three respective English teachers to score the checklist as they used the textbook in their teaching-learning activities. From the checklist scored by them, it is concluded that “English Way” is a good English textbook to be used in SMP Santo Yosef as it contains the four language skills –reading, writing, speaking and listening– and the three language components –grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. Besides, the topics and materials in this book are more on real-life situatio