An analysis of culture-related content in English textbooks

Abstract

This study investigates the representation of culture-related contents in five English textbooks for second year middle school students in Korea from a multicultural perspective. A content analysis of these textbooks was conducted, using three broad aspects of culture, the ‘cultural dimensions’, ‘cultural categories’, and ‘cultural themes’, as the evaluation framework. An imbalance in the representing textbook materials consistent with students` intercultural communicative competences was found to exist. First, with regard to cultural dimensions, English textbooks seriously under-represented aspects of culture as ‘communities’ and as ‘persons’. Second, in the analysis of cultural categories, all five of the English textbooks had relatively less intercultural interaction (ICI) elements, constraining the opportunities to reinforce students’ multicultural perspectives. Third, an analysis of the cultural themes revealed that there was an obvious imbalance in representing ‘products’ (Big C) and ‘practices’ (little c) in the textbooks, indicating that the representation of Korean cultures generally tended to favour culture as ‘little c’. This study argues that English teachers need to take an important role in selecting English textbooks applicable to the teaching practices under the multicultural perspectives, and that textbook publishers should redress the existing imbalances in the representation of cultural contents.