A Summative Evaluation of English for Iraq Series for High School: A Focus on Motivational Design

Abstract

This research is a summative evaluation of the "Opportunities 3", one of the English for Iraq textbook series for high school students, by utilising the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, which was developed by Keller in 1987 as the conceptual framework. The ARCS model, which covers four components (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction), provides a systematic way to see how learning materials affect the motivation of English language learners. A quantitative research method with a 36-item survey was applied in the study, which had been derived from Keller’s Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). The questionnaire was distributed to a purposeful sample of 200 students (100 males and 100 females) who were attending or had graduated from secondary schools in Baghdad. The research indicates that the textbook is not only very well accepted by the students but also has excellent motivational consistency in the areas of attention and relevance. On the contrary, the dimension of confidence exhibited lower scores, leading to the conclusion that the instrument hardly provides any effective instructional support or scaffolding. The results also indicated that there are gender-related satisfaction differences of high statistical significance, with males expressing more satisfaction than females. The research finishes with the teacher’s recommendations to promote better confidence-building strategies and to guarantee the greater inclusivity of the textbook. These policies add to the existing motivational instructional design literature and, at the same time, provide practical insights for curriculum developers and educational policymakers in the Iraqi context.