EFL coursebooks and the pluricentricity of English

Abstract

The present study is part of a complex research project, which investigates the role of the pluricentricity of English in the Hungarian educational system in general. Within that framework, the focus of this study is on two EFL coursebook series that are widely used in Hungary, covering the full range of CEFR levels from A1 to C1. As the literature unanimously advocates the representation of pluricentricity primarily in the field of the receptive skills, this paper examines three areas in the coursebooks in question: (1) vocabulary, (2) reading comprehension, and (3) listening comprehension. The most fundamental finding is that pluricentricity plays a rather marginal role in these coursebooks, which is completely in line with previous research findings. However, as the two coursebook series were published by different publishers, and one of them is considerably more pluricentricity-oriented than the other, this suggests that a greater openness to pluricentricity is indeed possible to achieve, given an appropriate degree of openness to linguistic variability. Although the differences between the varieties are manifest at all levels of the language, the coursebooks studied concentrate almost exclusively on vocabulary, in some cases accompanied by pronunciation patterns. This study provides textbook authors and publishers with concrete, scientifically grounded recommendations, which, if implemented, will bring language teaching and real-life language use closer together, thus potentially making the language learning process more successful.