Cultural representation in EFL course books

Abstract

This study is about the cultural representations of the target language in EFL course books. It also aims to investigate teachers' and students' perspectives on culture in EFL course books. The study was carried out at Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey, School of Foreign Languages, English Department. In the first phase, the EFL course books currently being used in the department have been examined thoroughly to get information about the cultural representations. In the second phase, 335 preparation class students were given questionnaires investigating their opinions on the target language culture in EFL course books. Afterwards, some students were interviewed and this process was tape-recorded. 70 EFL teachers in the same department also received an adapted form of the questionnaire given to the students. The aim was to explore the teachers' perspectives on culture in EFL class. The teachers were interviewed as well. During our analysis of the three EFL textbooks, we have observed cultural items of the target language and put them into categories. The findings of the study demonstrated that course book had a very important role in conveying them. In this paper, both teachers' and students' perspectives on culture and language, culture and classroom activities, culture and specific items have been presented in addition to culture and EFL course book. it was concluded that culture and language were inseparable. Eventually, the target language cultural representations in EFL course books would exist. Knowledge and awareness of culture might be the key words in coping with the mismatches that might occur in EFL class where learners and teachers of the language were from other culture.