Abstract
Despite the abundance of the literature addressing culture incorporation in English language teaching and learning, the study of the implicit, as well as the explicit, cultural representations in EFL textbooks’ linguistic content formulates an essential part with a consensus on its significant importance. Since 2012, a new EFL textbooks series written by foreign authors has been adopted in Iraq; this series does not seem to have gained a lot of quality research about the hidden curriculum, particularly related to its cultural content. This study investigates culture integration in the content of “English for Iraq” textbook series currently used in the intermediate schools in Iraq, aiming at detecting both any potential acculturation, and the kind of culture, (surface or deep) emphasized in the written texts and the visuals of the textbooks’ content. A qualitative research method is employed based on a descriptive content analysis. Findings show that the textbooks encompass sharp difference in the frequency occurrences of the cultural representations, resulting to the dominance of both the source (Iraqi local cultural) culture, and the two cultural dimensions, products and persons. This imbalanced representation drives the textbooks to be source-culture-based textbooks with least probability of acculturation, and be prevailed with surface culture materials focusing on items like Folks, Fairs, Festivals, and Food, which turn the textbooks to look like tourist’s guide books. The textbooks then follow a traditional approach for integrating culture in their content. A pedagogical implication of the study can be the necessity of re-considering culture corporation in these textb
Highlights
Every language carries culture; both culture and language are interwoven and closely bonded. Agar (1994: 28) used the term “linguaculture” in a reference to this unification between a language and its culture. Kramsch (1998: 63) mentions that no one is able to use or learn any language without being acquainted with the culture of its speakers
Since 2012, a new EFL textbooks series written by foreign authors has been adopted in Iraq; this series does not seem to have gained a lot of quality research about the hidden curriculum, related to its cultural content
In view of the findings shown in (Figure 1) below, the source culture in “English for Iraq” textbook series is the dominant cultural type followed by the neutral type, followed by the international type, and comes the target culture as the least represented type in the content
Summary
Every language carries culture; both culture and language are interwoven and closely bonded. Agar (1994: 28) used the term “linguaculture” in a reference to this unification between a language and its culture. Kramsch (1998: 63) mentions that no one is able to use or learn any language without being acquainted with the culture of its speakers. Kramsch (1998: 63) mentions that no one is able to use or learn any language without being acquainted with the culture of its speakers. Every language carries culture; both culture and language are interwoven and closely bonded. Based on this inseparability of culture and language, learning or teaching a language is by necessity learning or teaching culture (Brown, 2007,189-190). Since all “teaching materials (e.g. textbooks) directly or indirectly transmit cultural values to a certain degree” (Xiao, 2010: 4) and textbooks do communicate explicitly or implicitly “sets of social and cultural values which are inherent in their make-up” (Cunningsworth, 1995: 90) part
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