Guidelines to Evaluate Cultural Content in Textbooks
Ferit Kilickaya

EFL teachers need to be careful in their decision on the selection of cultural content for ELT classrooms. To address the issue, this paper investigates the design guidelines to evaluate textbooks as sources of cultural content in the ELT curriculum. The paper is organized in two parts. In the first part, the notion of culture and the important factors are discussed. Then, taking these factors into consideration, guidelines are designed to evaluate a textbook for cultural content.
Introduction
Culture in English language teaching materials has been subject to discussion among professionals and teachers for many years. Some teachers want to have cultural content in their language classrooms and similarly students may wish to acquire the cultural knowledge, which enables them to engage authentically with the language use of a particular native-speaking community. But there seems to be no sensible reason for insisting on this in the process of language learning. Native speakers may write textbooks and teachers` books, prepare cultural content, may be strong advocates of absolute authenticity in the materials, and make pronouncements and recommendations. However, their English is that which is associated with the communicative and communal needs of their community, and may not be relevant to those learning English as an international language. Also, their teaching may be suited to particular contexts of instruction which in many respects are quite different from those which we experience in the world. Teaching materials are proper to the extent that they are appropriate to learners` needs, not the extent that they have to be appropriate.
Culture: Definition
Culture may have different meanings for different professionals or teachers. According to Kramsch (1998), culture is `a membership in a discourse community that shares a common social space and history, and a common system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating, and action` (p. 127). Goodenough (as cited in Wardhaugh 1992: 216) suggests that
A society`s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. That knowledge is socially acquired; the necessary behaviors are learned and do not come from any kind of genetic endowment.
The term `culture` will be used in the sense of whatever a person must have in order to function and live in a particular society. This includes also socio-cultural factors in the language teaching materials.
Factors Involved in `Cultural Content`
Socio-cultural Factors
The first question to ask ourselves considering socio-cultural factors in our language teaching is whether we should include socio-cultural factors in the teaching process (Wardhaugh, 1992). If the answer is `yes`, the questions of how much socio-cultural information should be given to learners and what kind of techniques should be used need to be answered. Whether you give sociolinguistic information you, as a teacher, also talk about the target culture (TC) in the classroom The target culture does not need to be English or British culture and should include a variety of cultures. While considering these questions, learners` needs, characteristics and aims should be taking into consideration.
Learners` Needs
These are the factors to be considered in deciding whether cultural information will be given and how much cultural information will be given in the language teaching process. First teachers should look at the target student population and try to answer the following questions:
Consider the students` needs. What are they going to do with the target culture?
Look at the students` previous learning experiences.
Then look at the learners` characteristics (Age, educational level, attitudes, socioeconomic status).
Consider the attitudes that the students have towards learning the target language.
Teachers` Role
Teachers should make the learners learn about the cultures and why certain things happen in other cultures. They should not try to make their learners think or become like people in the cultures presented. They should not give the idea that one`s own culture is better than the target culture or vice versa. They should point out that cultures differ.
Materials
Hidden Curriculum
Most of the cultural information comes from course books that are designed for a specific language. Course books will directly or indirectly communicate sets of cultural values. This is called `hidden curriculum` (Cunningsworth, 1995; Holly, 1990). Many educationalists claim that hidden curriculum is more effective than the official curriculum. Risager (as cited in Cunningsworth, 1995) states that
Foreign language teaching textbooks no longer just develop concurrently with the development of foreign language pedagogy in a narrow sense, but they increasingly participate in the general cultural transmission with the educational system and in the rest of society (p. 90).
Since the underlying system is not explicitly stated, it requires us to look at course books in detail to understand the unstated values.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes can be defined as `the conventionalized ways of talking and thinking about other people and cultures` (Kramsch 1998: 131). Stereotypes may result in learners whose cultural ineptitude will affect detrimentally their personal language acquisition (Clarke and Clarke 1990: 31). While analyzing a course book in terms of stereotypes, it is necessary to identify unrepresentative negative stereotypes,