Investigating High School Students’ Attitudes Towards Friends Global Textbook

Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training’s nationwide English educational reforms have introduced a new English textbook series aimed at enhancing students’ communicative competencies. Although extensive research has evaluated these English textbook series based on the General Education English Curriculum 2018, it has focused solely on educators’ perspectives. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the high school students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes towards one of those series, the Friends Global textbook, regarding learners' needs. Utilizing a mixed-method design, the study combined questionnaire data from 226 grade-ten and grade-eleven students with insights from semi-structured interviews with eight participants. Findings reveal that students generally hold positive attitudes towards the textbook’s reading skills, vocabulary, and grammar but display ambivalence towards speaking, listening, and writing skills and are opposed to phonology. These results offer valuable insights for the Ministry of Education and Training, textbook authors, and ELT educators, supporting future curriculum development, textbook evaluation, and instructional planning.