Cultural Content Analysis on an EFL Textbook Used by the Tenth Graders of Indonesian Senior High Schools
Daftar Isi:
- Textbooks played important roles in English language teaching. An evaluation of English textbooks was needed to make sure the appropriateness of the English textbook for students. The textbooks should be not only valued based on their visual illustrations but also based on their cultural background and goals of EFL learning. This research aimed to analyze the kinds of culture and how it was represented on an EFL textbook which is used by the tenth graders of Indonesian senior high schools. This study used a descriptive qualitative design. The researcher analyzed the types and cultural information on Indonesian EFL textbook for the tenth graders in senior high school by using a checklist worksheet. The checklist worksheet was constructed by the researcher to categorize the data. Theory of cultures proposed by Cortazzi & Jin and Adaskou, Britten, & Fahsi was adapted to develop the checklist. The researcher found that the English textbook showed three types of culture namely source culture (learners’ own culture), target culture (culture of English native countries, such as US and UK) and international culture (culture of English speaking countries other than US and UK and non English speaking countries). They are found in a balance proportion in which the source culture or Indonesian culture (45.45 %) was more dominant than the target culture (36.36 %) and the international culture (18.2 %). This finding is supported by Cortazzi and Jin’s theory. Furthermore, the source culture or Indonesian culture was generally represented in the form of informative text. The examined textbook showed less dense cultural information in the form of texts presenting foreign attitudes, dialogues, visual illustrations, realia, contextualized writing tasks, collocations and idioms. Regarding the benefits of learning about cultural content on the textbook, the culture class had raised cultural awareness in ELT students.