Analyzing the Cultural Content of High School English Textbook “English for Iraq” for Sixth Preparatory Grade

Abstract

There are some of English teachers mainly focus on developing their students' four language skills, often neglecting to introduce cultural components related to learning English. As a result, students may have low understanding of the accompanied culture as cultural background or materials is basically not instructed directly. Otherwise, it can be contained through the use of textbooks. Therefore, it is essential for teachers to select proper textbooks that vitaly integrate cultural representation side by side with language instruction. 

This study scrutinize how cultural background is represented in the English textbooks with the title “English for Iraq,” which is published by Olivia Johnston and Caroline Messieres for six-grade students in high schools of Iraqi preparatory. A content evaluation was performed through using two cultural features as the evaluation structure: ‘cultural categories’ and ‘cultural dimensions.’ The evaluation discussed 8 elements and 43 reading passages. 

The findings reveal two primary features. The first one denotes to the cultural categories discussed by Cortazzi and Jin (1999), while the leading category is the local culture. The other categories contain intended culture which refers to countries where English is an official language, and is stood for to a lesser extent, and global culture, which has the smallest representation. 

The next aspect is taken from Moran’s (2001) five dimensions of culture. The dimension with the most portrayal is ‘output’ , which is followed by ‘individua’ and ‘society.’ The dimensions of ‘activity’ and ‘perspective’ are formed as a lesser degree in the textbook.