Textbook Evaluation : Cultural Ponderation in New Prospects

Abstract

The inseparability of language and culture and the increasing role of English as a global language become the focal reasons of investigation in the field of foreign and second language instruction. The present study is an attempt to explore the cultural content of an in-use and the recently published English language secondary school book entitled New Prospects. It aims to examine and identify the different aspects and types of culture which are packaged in the prescribed course book. It also deals with determining whether the representation of a variety of cultures in the textbook reflect the status of English as an international medium of communication. The content of the teaching material is analyzed and evaluated based on the theoretical framework advocated by Byram et al (1993). The frequencies and occurrences of cultural elements which are sorted out from Byram ‘s checklist are in turn classified and categorized according to Martin Cortazzi and Lixian Jin’s theoretical framework ( 1999) which refer to three types of cultures: source culture , target culture , and the world culture. The findings make it clear that the course book addresses various cultural aspects about big ‘C’ culture and small ‘c’ culture which also correspond to different cultures; the native culture, the target culture and the world culture (C1, C2, C3… etc.). In other words, the obtained data revealed that there is a balance in the portrayal of the national, target and international cultures in the school book. Consequently, this is potentially beneficial in the sense that it permits language learners to develop necessary skills for communicating adequately in different situations.