Global Business Textbook Evaluation: Task Types in the Spotlight

Textbook evaluation, with the aim of assisting the choice of the most suitable book for a specific context, has become a needed practice in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). During recent years, with the rapid spread of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and its concern for tasks and activities that enhance learners’ interaction, more researchers have become interested in exploring the different task types in textbooks in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). The present study sought to evaluate the two most popular global business English textbook series (English Business Result and Market Leader) that are taught in Iranian institutes, in terms of their task types according to Nunan’s (1999) classification of tasks. The results revealed that linguistic tasks and creative tasks were respectively the most and the least common task types presented in these textbooks. The results also indicated a significant difference among the frequency of task types in the textbooks. It was evident that these ESP textbooks covered all of the macro tasks and most of the micro tasks specified by Nunan (1999), but some of them significantly focused on specific types of tasks.