As language and culture are deemed inseparable, teachers often incorporate the teaching of culture as part of their content into language classes. Since the 1980s, target culture learning has been taught as a critical element in the language classroom.
Stewart (1972), for example, stated that the target language culture should be an indispensable stage of foreign language learning. However, English has gradually gained a global status since the second half of the twentieth century (Yano, 2009), which prompted many prolific scholars in the field, namely McKay (2002), Alsagoff et al. (2012); Matsuda (2012); and Sharifian (2009) to relentlessly promote the importance of teaching English as “a heterogeneous language with multiple grammars, vocabulary, accents, and pragmatic discourse conventions”. This led to the emergence of EIL, a language used by people of different nations who do not share a common native language to communicate (Smith, 1976). One pedagogical sense of EIL is that English learning should focus on improving learners' ability to understand cultures, including their own, and use this understanding to successfully communicate with people from other cultures (McKay, 2002). Indeed, since learners are preparing themselves for the use of English in international contexts, the cultural content that should be taught is much broader than only target culture. This implies that teaching a variety of cultures to the learners is essential.
Since learners in EFL classrooms are preparing themselves to use English in international contexts, the teaching and learning contents should embrace cultural
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broadness. For teaching materials to capture such broadness, their cultural content must be drawn from multiple sources. Regarding the teaching of culture, Cortazzi and Jin (1999) outlined three important categories of cultural information for EIL teaching materials, namely “source culture materials,” “target culture materials,” and
“international target culture materials.”
Source cultural materials are materials that depict the culture of language learners. These are typically the textbooks that a nation's educational system produces. Instead of preparing students to interact with people from various cultures, this group of textbooks aims to let students talk about their own culture to foreign visitors to their nation.
Target culture materials typically concentrate on one or two target cultures, such as the United Kingdom or the United States. Textbooks are the most often used educational resource in English as a foreign language. While widely utilised worldwide, they are criticised for being overly commercial and viewed as publishers' promotional materials.
International target culture materials refer to materials that depict a wide range of cultures in nations where English is spoken as a first or second language or in nations where English is not spoken as a first or second language but is utilised as an international language. According to Cortazzi and Jin (1999), the justification for this group is that speakers who do not use English as their native language utilise it in international contexts quite frequently.
Chao (2011) expanded on the cultural sources identified by Cortazzi and Jin (1999) by adding two more sources, namely “intercultural interaction” and
“universality across culture.” Content that aids students in comparing and reflecting on the differences or similarities between their local and target/international cultures is placed under Intercultural Interaction. Universality across Culture pertains to content primarily related to linguistic knowledge and practice that does not pay attention to any specific culture or country. In this study, Chao's (2011) classifications were employed as a checklist for textbook analysis.
14 Table 1
The categories and the criteria to classify culture (adapted from Chao (2011)
Cultural Categories Explanations
Source Culture It refers to the culture of the learners.
Target Culture It includes English-speaking countries in the inner circle (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA).
International Target Culture
It includes cultures of all countries in the world (European International Culture countries, countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia) except for Vietnamese and English- speaking cultures.
Intercultural Interaction
It includes the comparison, reflection, intercultural communication, or awareness of the differences and similarities between the local/source and the target /international culture through activities such as case studies, problem-solving, and role-play to help students develop positive attitudes, knowledge, skills, and awareness in international communication.
Universality across Culture
It includes general knowledge/content not specific to any particular culture or country.
Furthermore, Paige et al. (1999) propose a model to categorise culture into two types, namely big “C” culture and little “c” culture. Big “C” culture relates to visible cultural aspects, including art, geography, history, education, festivals, and customs of the target community, and is easily recalled by language learners. In contrast, little
“c” culture consists of more profound and intangible aspects such as beliefs, norms, and socio-cultural variables, including age, gender, and social status. It encompasses
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the routine aspects of life and is crucial for learning appropriate language use and successful intercultural communication. Other researchers, such as Peterson (2004), Chen (2004), Lee (2009), and Xiao (2010), have used and adapted this model in their studies. In Lee’s model, 48 themes under two types of cultures were proposed for analysis. On the other hand, in Xiao's model, 16 themes are designed as follows:
● Big “C” cultures are (9 themes): politics, history, economy, geography, literature/art, social norms, education, architecture, and music.
● Little “c” cultures are (7 themes): food, holiday, lifestyle, customs, values, hobbies, and gestures/ body language.
In conclusion, due to the relationship between language and culture, as well as the international state of English, it is critical to teach cultural contents of various sources, including source culture, target culture, international target culture, and interactional culture, and this should be reflected in the materials students use. The researcher decided to base the textbook analysis on these four sources of culture, and all of the culture-unrelated contents were classified under the Universality across Culture group. Another point is that two types of culture, big “C” and little “c,” are also considered in this study as they are highly beneficial for the depth of the textbook analysis framework.