The Cultural Representations in the Unlock English Series and EFL Teachers’ and EFL Learners’ Perspectives towards Them

Abstract

This study aims to find out (1) to what extent the Unlock English textbooks present Big ‘C’ cultural themes, (2) to what extent the Unlock English textbooks present small ‘c’ cultural themes, and (3) what are EFL teachers’ and EFL learners’ perspectives towards the cultural content of the Unlock series. This research has adopted a mixed research design, both quantitative and qualitative. To answer the first two research questions, the cultural content of the Unlock textbooks was analyzed quantitively to find out all cultural themes included in the Unlock series. As for the third research question, a qualitative descriptive design was adopted by conducting the perspectives of (9) EFL teachers’ and (75) EFL learners’. The findings show that there is a wide range of various cultural themes available in the Unlock series, but with different frequencies and dominance. The findings also show teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards the cultural content which appear to be generally positive. The researcher recommends enriching the EFL textbooks with more interesting and preferred cultural content.