A central message in current literature on materials
evaluation is the “need to find out more about
what learners and teachers want from language
learning materials” (Tomlinson, 1998, p.341). Rather
than appraisal of materials by apparent value, appeal,
or hope that they might work, there is a need for more
systematic feedback from materials users; however,
to date, there has been little published on post-use/
post-course materials evaluation (Ellis, 1998). This
investigation aims 1) to determine the suitability of two
new core textbooks within an innovative curriculum,
and 2) to address a specific problem—a gap in the extent
to which teachers and administrators are accountable
for decisions within curriculum planning. To help
inform decision-making in any given context, both
teachers and students are uniquely situated as the most
obvious users to provide firsthand feedback of materials
(Brown, 1995). First, this paper examines and describes
participants’ reactions to a range of listening and reading
task-types and topics, and perceived difficulty of the
language learning level of the texts. Second, since the
majority of the results are relevant to the context in