A Content Analysis of Cultural Representation in High School English Textbook in 2013 Education Curriculum

Abstract

This study reports cultural content in the latest high school English textbook concerning the 2013 education curriculum. Besides, this paper also explores the intercultural communicative competence within the English textbooks. A qualitative research design is employed in this study. Moreover, the cultural contents and intercultural communicative competence were taken from the reading text on English textbooks for the last grade of senior high school entitled ‘Bahasa Inggris 2018 revised edition’. This study relied on the kind of cultural contents by Cortazzi & Jin (1999), types of cultural dimensions by Yuen (2011), and three levels of intercultural communicative competence by Byram (2002). It has been found that target culture with the cultural dimension of the product had a major proportion on the English textbook. Besides, the lowest level of intercultural communicative competence, namely basic cultural awareness was also discovered. In such a case, the complicity of intercultural values in the textbook should be given more attention so that students can easily grasp the values of various cultures. As a result, the aims of the 2013 education curriculum can be achieved well.

How Do Intercultural Communication Textbooks Represent Culture? A Case Study of Chinese Culture

“…In an EFL context, the same classification is sometimes referred to as cultures of the inner circle, outer circle, and expanding circle (Kachru 1985). A good number of empirical studies adopt the typology, and their findings consistently show that representations of target culture tend to dominate (e.g., Astiandani and Purwati 2021;Baleghizadeh and Shayesteh 2020;Deswila et al 2021;Ma and Pan 2023;Nurjanah and Umaemah 2019;Shin et al 2011). However in textbooks compiled locally, the inclusion of source culture is on the rise and sometimes even exceeds that of the target culture (e.g., Hermawan and Noerkhasanah 2012;Rashidi and Meihami 2016;Riadini and Cahyono 2021;Syahri and Susanti 2016).…”

“…In addition to specific cultural contents, some studies also evaluated the intercultural contents of textbooks (e.g., Astiandani and Purwati 2021;Li 2023;Siddiqie 2011). Byram's (1989) checklist of eight cultural dimensions is often used for this purpose (see Ariawan 2020 and Riadini and Cahyono 2021 for examples).…”