AN ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL CONTENT OF IRAQI          EFL TEXTBOOKS

ALI SHREEB, MOHSIN

	AN ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL CONTENT OF IRAQI EFL TEXTBOOKS
journal of kerbala university
Article 1, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2017, Pages 1-19 PDF (0 K)
Author
MOHSIN ALI SHREEB
Abstract
Language is not only a mean of communication since it infuses our knowledge with our thoughts, believes, actions and behaviors and these represent the culture of any society. Thus learning a foreign language in fact is learning a foreign culture. Because of that, most educators agree that cultural awareness is an important aim in foreign language learning. Textbooks are generally considered the pivotal source of the teaching material of most sciences in Iraq. Hence, textbooks play an important role in any program designed for learning a foreign language and are considered the major source for disseminating cultural elements of the target language. Textbooks content analysis is used as a method to identify categories of the content of textbooks. The present study tries to shed light on the state of culture in Iraqi textbooks used to teach English as a foreign language in general and high school textbooks in particular. The study aims at estimating which culture is manifested in English high school textbooks, besides which categories of culture are most mentioned. After analyzing sixth preparatory English language textbook, results reveal that the most dominant type of culture is culture free reference. Results also show that the social category is the most mentioned category. The study concludes that sixth preparatory textbook does not pay enough attention to target language culture.

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