The Cultural Content Analysis on the English Textbook Entitled “When English Rings A Bell” for the Seventh Grade of Junior High School Based on the Cultural Dimensions and Categories

Abstract

Most language teachers agree that teaching culture in foreign or second language education is important because language cannot be separated from its culture and vice versa. Since culture is different from one country to another, it is important to put attention to the context of the language production so that it will not be misunderstood by the recipient. For this reason, EFL learners need to learn culture to develop their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) so that they can fit into a globalized world. ICC refers to the capability of someone to interact with other people from another country and culture in a foreign language. Developing ICC is able to communicate effectively. This is why teaching English culture to those Indonesian students who learn English as a foreign language is badly needed. One of the ways in teaching English culture to the students is through textbook. A good textbook should contain three categories of culture, namely the source culture, the target culture, and the international culture. This study investigated the Indonesian locally published EFL textbook entitled „When English Rings a Bell‟ for the seventh grade of junior high school students by focusing on its cultural dimensions and cultural categories content. Furthermore, The data were collected by using documentary research method. The five dimensions of culture and the three categories of culture were used to analyze the data. The five dimensions of culture was used to identify the cultural dimensions included in the textbook. Meanwhile, the cultural categories was used to identify the categories of culture appeared in the textbook. Both visual artifacts (pictures) and textual artifact (conversations) were analyzed to find out the findings. The results showed that the different dimensions of culture specifically products, practices, communities, and persons were included in this textbook. It was found that „products‟ dimension had higher frequency among other cultural dimensions and there was no „perspectives‟ dimension included in this current English textbook. Meanwhile, for the cultural categories content, it was found that the source culture was highlighted over other two categories. Less presentation had been given to the target culture and there was no reference of international culture included in this English textbook. Since this English textbook was endorsed by the Indonesian Ministry of National Education, it carries the government agenda that in this case the students must know their own culture than the others. Finally, after studying the current English textbook, the learners are expected to know their country and culture better and can be more aware and love their own country and culture as their identities.