Abstract Although the importance of English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks is widely acknowledged, previous evaluation of ELT materials has paid little attention to the place of writing in textbook series. The present thesis is an attempt to study the place of writing in Iranian senior high school English textbooks since 1979, i.e. marking the establishment of the Islamic republic of Iran, to 2016. To this end, all of the writing tasks in Iranian senior high school ELT textbooks developed by Iran’s Ministry of Education were examined for their underlying features while drawing on Littlejohn’s (2011) task analysis sheet. The purpose, here, was to see whether their underlying aspects reflected universal SLA principles. Then, all available authoritative curriculum documents were studied and interviews with one key official and one ELT material developer in the Center for Writing Textbooks and Planning National Curricula were conducted. Totally, one hundred and thirteen writing tasks were identified in the textbooks. Almost all of the writing tasks were found to be writing-as-a-means type engaging the students with aspects of language other than the writing itself. Also, the textbooks relied heavily on mechanical writing drills to practice certain structures thereby lagging behind SLA research and practice. Moreover, the results of the interviews as well as studying national curriculum documents attested to the lack of any ELT-specific documents for material development. It is recommended that L2 writing pedagogy in Iran and similar contexts needs to be reevaluated in the light of more recent breakthroughs in writing scholarship. Keywords: English textbooks; Writing-as-a-means; Mechanical drills; SLA research and practice
