Investigating cultural contents in English language teaching materials through textbook evaluation

Abstract

Abstract The shift in the status of English as a lingua franca has challenged native-speaker culture in English language teaching and learning. That is why it is not enough to expose language learners through monoculture language teaching. Rather being communicatively competent, learners may require inter-cultural understanding. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the representation of cultures through different senses in Oxford Progressive English (OPE), Level-10 (Rachel Redford, 2016). As OPE caters the needs of Pakistani language learners, it is hypothesized that learners’ source culture prevails more than other two cultures (i.e. international, and target). To confirm this hypothesis, a detailed content analysis of cultural senses (prevailed in OPE) is carried out through Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi (1990). The results show that the frequency of reading texts in OPE is highly imbued with learners’ target culture that is followed by the international culture, and least by learners’ source culture. Moreover, culturally neutral texts lack in inter-cultural understanding, and appear to be disseminated to marginalize L2 learners from target and international cultures.