Culture in Textbook Analysis and Evaluation

Abstract

Textbooks often play a central role in the formal teaching of foreign and second languages, especially at beginning level. To this day, much language teaching is structured by published textbooks, even if it is supplemented with other materials from the Internet or elsewhere. In view of the importance of textbooks in providing learners with their first authoritative glimpses of the target culture, only a little work in applied linguistics has explored issues concerning the choice of cultural content for textbooks. However, the research that has been conducted points to the importance of different ways of representing culture, the ideological dimensions of cultural choices authors make, as well as the variety of methodological perspectives that are useful.

Analysing culture in language learning materials

“…Before that, textbooks were also sometimes mentioned and evaluated – for example, in language teaching journals – but that was typically in the form of shorter reviews of recent publications. The timeline does not contain encyclopedia entries, but some entries may be mentioned here: Koreik and Pietzuch (2010); Risager (2010); Risager and Chapelle (2013); Verdelhan and Sercu (2013); and Weninger (2018).…”

Cultural Representation in American-Published Chinese as a Foreign Language Textbooks: China's Culture or Chinese's Culture?

“…The postmodernist approach emphasizes the role of different perspectives in cultural representation in relation to a language and aims to raise students' global cultural consciousness. This approach celebrates cultural diversity and encourages textbooks to include not only the central country and essential knowledge, but also other language-speaking areas to engage learners with individual learning needs, experiences, and identities; and promote their ability to comprehend a wide variety of information (Risager & Chapelle, 2013;Risager, 2018).…”

“…To promote multicultural consciousness, textbooks have long been recognized as the most accessible written resources in providing learners with authoritative linguistic and cultural information (Chapelle, 2009, Canale, 2016Kumaravadivelu, 2008;Risager & Chapelle, 2013;Thompson, 2013;Weninger & Kiss, 2015). Learners who have little or no connection to the target language and culture are likely to view textbooks as a dependable source of knowledge (Azimova & Johnston, 2012;Weninger & Kiss, 2013), and teachers are likely to treat textbooks as a curriculumbuilding resource (Capelle, 2009;Matsuda, 2002;Yamanaka, 2006).…”

How Do Intercultural Communication Textbooks Represent Culture? A Case Study of Chinese Culture

“…Among the various topics of textbook analysis research, the study of cultural representation occupies a special place and has been carried out by scholars from fields such as socio-linguistics, communication science, literature, history, education, etc. (Canale 2021;Risager and Chapelle 2013). Research suggests that textbooks can play a significant role in constructing national identity and branding cultural/national/ethnic images (Lv 2016;Ohliger 1999;Popow 2014), or be effective tools to increase multicultural exposure and enhance cultural awareness (Canale 2016;Risager 2022;Tajeddin and Teimournezhad 2014).…”