Cultural Contents of an EFL Textbook

Abstract

Culture constitutes an inseparable part of language teaching and learning process. Using the framework advocated by Cortazzi and Jin (1999) and Yuen (2011), this study aims to scrutinize the potential use of a vocational high school textbook to facilitate students' intercultural communicative competence indicated by the coverage of the types of cultures comprising the source culture, target culture, and international target culture and the 4Ps elements of cultures comprising products, practices, perspectives, and persons represented in the textbook. A descriptive study by utilizing a set of checklists and interviews were employed to garner the data. Moreover, two English teachers at a school where the selected textbook was used were involved to construe their voices concerning the intercultural communicative competence learning and instruction process conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, some systematic procedures comprising initial coding, axial coding, and selective coding were employed leading to the findings, conclusions, and implications. The findings reveal all the types and elements of the cultures were found in textbooks even though with different proportions in each unit. The study reached a conclusion that the textbook was considered to have some potential for developing students' intercultural communicative competence for it has balance cultures in terms of the source cultures, target cultures, and international target cultures. Meanwhile, internet access and students' English proficiency were the common issues as the teachers developed the materials particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, target culture was believed by the teachers to have more benefits for students' learning.