Cultural Content in EFL Listening and Speaking Textbooks for Chinese University Students

Abstract

The aim of this article was to report the results of a textbooks analysis in an attempt to identify which type of culture and what kind of culture were introduced in Chinese EFL textbooks for the university level. Four teachers’ manuals of EFL College English textbooks for Chinese non-English major students were investigated. The analysis revealed that more than half of the cultural content was unidentifiable. Among identified cultural content, the textbooks were dominated by target cultural content while international target culture and source cultural content contained a very small percentage. It was also found out that among the 19 cultural themes under Big “C” and little “c” culture, the predominant theme was little “c” of “values” and the absent themes were common little “c” themes (i.e. “food”, “holidays”, “hobbies and “body language”). Such lack of source information and imbalanced selection in NHCE of cultural themes might not be sufficient to develop Chinese non-English major students’ ICC and thus might cause difficulties to students when they take part in intercultural communication. This study also makes suggestions on how culture can be represented in university level Chinese textbooks to promote students’ ICC.