The emergence of a purpose-specific model: culture in English language textbooks

As there is no well-established benchmark in terms of the representation of culture in English Language textbooks, culture representation has often been treated as a matter of opinion. To address this gap, having classified the textbooks in an EFL context into three types, namely local, localised, a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIntercultural education (London, England) Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 547 - 561
Main Authors Mostafaei Alaei, Mahnaz, Parsazadeh, Hossein
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 03.09.2021
Subjects
Advanced Students
Benchmarking
Classification
Content Analysis
Cultural Awareness
Cultural Traits
Diversity
English (Second Language)
Foreign Countries
international textbooks
Language Teachers
Likert Scales
local textbooks
localised textbooks
Minority Groups
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Source culture
Student Attitudes
target culture
Teacher Attitudes
Textbook Evaluation
Textbooks
Iran
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Summary:As there is no well-established benchmark in terms of the representation of culture in English Language textbooks, culture representation has often been treated as a matter of opinion. To address this gap, having classified the textbooks in an EFL context into three types, namely local, localised, and international, the researchers drew on the teachers and students' points of view as a point of reference. To this end, two sets of interviews and a questionnaire comprised the main means of data collection. As regards the teachers, 15 well-experienced teachers, mainly PhD holders and students of English, took part in a semi-structured interview containing six questions. Accordingly, a questionnaire embodying nine issues was developed and filled out by 225 English teachers. As regards the students, 13 highly advanced students of English expressed their ideas about different English language textbooks. As a result, the teachers voiced their concern on the biased representation of the target culture and marginalisation of the minorities' cultures in the international textbooks as well as the poor representation of culture in local and localised textbooks, a fact which was later echoed by the students. Lastly, a purpose-specific model for the representation of culture in English Language textbooks was proposed.
ISSN:1467-5986
1469-8439
DOI:10.1080/14675986.2021.1878111