The Integration of Cultural Content in Efl Instructional Materials
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NEELLS Proceedings National English Education, Language, and Literature Seminar 2020 THE INTEGRATION OF CULTURAL CONTENT IN EFL INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS Dihliz Khalfi Masita, Sri Rachmajanti, Nur Mukminatien Universitas Negeri Malang [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: Language and culture are intertwined in that the language is created by the culture, and the language will represent the existing culture so as to reflect the cultural values. This study aimed to investigate how the cultural contents are presented in the English textbook for the tenth graders, or to find out the cultural dimensions of the textbook in particular. Descriptive content analysis was used to analyze the textbook. Using the criteria for evaluating a textbook, the variables to be examined incorporated the dimensions of culture and the categories of culture. The results showed that this textbook has been dominated by the product dimension depicting the target culture, i.e. the Western culture. It is then recommended that the textbook also include the learners’ cultural background, their native culture. By doing so, the students would be exposed to both their native culture values for enhancing their identity and the target culture values for developing cross-cultural understanding. Keywords: Cultural content, English textbook, content analysis INTRODUCTION English has been widespread around the world and has evolved as an international language for economic, social, and technological purposes. Therefore, many people want and have to learn English. Even English is one of the compulsory subjects in some countries including Indonesia. Teaching English is one of the most widely used ways to provide and develop students' competencies in communicating using the language. In order to be communicatively competent, Arslan (2016) requires that language users should be culturally equipped. Therefore, the teacher should include the target culture in language teaching. Risager (2012) claims that language and culture cannot be separated as language practices are connected to other real-life cultural and social practices. Moran (2001) describes culture as an evolving way of life for a group of people, consisting of a common set of activities associated with a shared amount of goods, based on a shared set of perspectives on the environment and within particular social contexts. In addition, language, as defined by Wardhaugh (2002), is knowledge of principles and rules, and ways to speak and do things with words, sounds, and sentences, rather than simply knowledge of particular sounds, words, and sentences. Those definitions about culture and language are linked to each other meaning that the language is created by the culture and the language will adapt to the existing culture for that cultural value to be conveyed. There are several reasons that make culture important to learn. First, culture is important because it creates the world in which we think we live. Second, culture is a bond that ties the people of a region or community together. It is that one common bond, which brings the people of a community together. Third, the cultural values help develop a sense of belonging, and a feeling of unity in the minds of the people of that particular culture. The last, culture is important because it creates assumptions about how the world operates, and those assumptions in turn drive a huge piece of our behavior. Even though students are mandatory to learn the English language, the teachers should also make the learning process contain mostly with the culture of Indonesia in it. The 1945 Constitution Article 32 Paragraph 1 states that the government develops Indonesia's national culture in world civilization by ensuring people's freedom to preserve and develop their cultural values. This is one of the missions of Indonesia’s education to bring its unique culture to all stages of local and international communities through the instructional materials, one of which is a textbook. According to Samuel (2009), instructional materials refer to those alternative channels of communication, which a classroom teacher can use to concretize a concept during the teaching and learning process. Therefore, the Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture has produced English textbooks for junior and senior high levels of education in Indonesia on the bases of the methods, contents, procedures, and the systematic syllabus of the latest curriculum (Curriculum 2013). The birth of a new curriculum is usually accompanied by the release of a variety of 13 NEELLS Proceedings National English Education, Language, and Literature Seminar 2020 textbooks. The problem is what culture should be taught and studied through the textbook is not explicitly considered in the instructional program. In this context, therefore, it is important to analyze the cultural content in the textbook to prevent cultural dominance and/ or bias, which has often been a problem in the ELT. Although the government has published a list of adequate textbooks, the evaluation of textbooks is necessary to do since teachers show a reliance on textbooks in the classroom. Riemann (2009) states that some factors should be considered in evaluating textbooks’ effectiveness in presenting cultural content. Firstly, it refers to the alignment of the instructional objectives and results, the degree to which material is used to raise cultural awareness or involve students in a manner that encourages curiosity and a positive understanding of the target language and related communities. The second is presentation, which refers to how cultural material is used, omitted, or simplified. The third is practice, including general factors deciding how cultural material is balanced to take account for immediate, short-term considerations such as teaching skill, marketability, and relevance. From the three factors above, it can be concluded that when evaluating a textbook, the target culture and local culture should be balanced. In addition, the culture presented should at least be filtered as well as possible to increase the students' positive understanding of the local and international culture. Thus, this study was carried out to identify the cultural content of the English textbook used for the ten graders entitled The Pathway to English. Henceforth, this study was designed to answer two research questions: (1) How are the cultural contents presented in the textbook “Pathway to English” for the tenth graders? and (2) Does the textbook meet the requirements of a good communicative English textbook in terms of the cultural contents? METHOD As the purpose of the study was to obtain specific and detailed information about the content of a textbook, a content analysis was adopted. According to Ary (2010), content analysis focused on analyzing and interpreting recorded materials to learn about human behavior. The textbook was evaluated and analyzed based on the dimensions of culture (Moran, 2001), categories of culture (Cotazzi & Jin,1999), and supporting learning materials (BSNP, 2014). The source of the data is an English textbook entitled Pathway to English for the tenth graders published by Erlangga in 2013. The textbook contains 11 units in 248 pages with the following themes of the 2013 Curriculum for the tenth graders. Table 1. The Themes of the Textbook Chapter Theme Chapter Theme 1 All About Me 7 Describing People 2 Well Done! 8 Describing Places 3 Are You Okay? 9 It’s Missing! 4 I Will Improve My English 10 A Time in a Life 5 Congratulations! 11 A Long Time Ago… 6 I’ve Been There The main instrument used in this study was an evaluation sheet. According to Cunningsworth (1995), one of the main benefits of using the evaluation sheet was that it offered an economic and efficient way of ensuring that all related things were eligible for evaluation. Prior to usage, the sheet was validated to an expert of materials development, and then revised in the domains of the dimensions of practices and perspectives to avoid misunderstandings, and the selection of the cultural dimensions to be examined. According to Moran (2001), there are four dimensions, i.e., products, practices, perspectives, and persons. For this study, the dimensions selected were those which were suitable for the tenth graders’ core and basic competences. Table 2 displays the cultural phenomena represented in each unit in the textbook. 14 NEELLS Proceedings National English Education, Language, and Literature Seminar 2020 Table 2. The Summary of the Four Dimensions of Culture Dimensions Examples Products 1. Places: buildings, cities 2. Art forms: music Practices 1. Action 2. Interaction Perspectives They represent the beliefs, values, and attitudes that underline the products and guide people’s behavior in the practice of culture. They can be explicit but often they are implicit, outside conscious awareness. Persons They refer to individual members who embody the culture and its communities in unique ways. Personal identity and life history play key roles in the development of a cultural person. Besides those domains, two other categories of culture by Cortazzi and Jin (1999) were adopted in this study. The first is the native culture that refers to the original culture of the learners, which is the Indonesian culture, and the second one is the target culture referring to the Western culture, which can be Australia, United Kingdom, or America. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Research Question 1 How are the cultural contents presented in the Pathway to English textbook for the tenth graders? The cultural contents of the Pathway to English for the tenth graders textbook are presented in five cultural elements: places/products, practices, perspectives, persons, and supporting learning materials through texts, pictures, and some activities. The explanation of the five elements is presented in the following description. Places/Products This point describes many elements of source and target culture that fit the category of products. Places and music are the sub-variables included in this element. Source (Native/Indonesian) Culture Products In Chapter 1, self-introduction is chosen as the main topic.