Critical Cultural Awareness in the Intercultural Reading Contents of the EFL Course Books

Abstract

This study investigates how intercultural reading texts can foster critical cultural awareness in EFL course books and how critical cultural awareness of learners is reflected. The study is administered in a qualitative research method by analyzing triangulation data from four different EFL course books. The data are analyzed using the content analysis approach after examining the general distribution of Intercultural (IC) reading texts and activities based on Sobkowiak's framework. There are contrastive distributions among four EFL coursebooks. One of the noticeable points in this study is that the EFL coursebook focused on reading skills demonstrates the higher distribution of 'Interpreting visual and verbal cultural representations,' which were mainly focused on native English-speaking cultures. On the contrary, the other EFL coursebook for reading skills focuses on 'reflecting on values, beliefs, and behaviors 'with various cultural elements. Based on these different results from the study, critical implications are made concerning participants' Critical Cultural Awareness (CCA).