EFL TEXTBOOKS AS MEANSOF ENHANCING LEARNERS’ ICC
The textbook is a key component in most language programs. It may even constitute the main and perhaps only source of language input that learners receive and the basis for language practice that occurs both inside and outside the classroom. The present research is an attempt to definethe top English textbooks and topics according to the survey conducted among private tutors teaching the English language courses in Kostanay, as well as provide recommendations to ICC teaching activities. Furthermore, obtained results areused to identifythe cultural issues the textbooks focused on. Consequently, possible ways are suggested to address the cultural issues that might help learners build more substantive intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the language classroom.
Key words: textbooks, culture, ICC, English tutors, English language courses.
INTRODUCTION
English tutors teaching the language at private training courses, unlike teachers working atpublic educational institutions, have the opportunity to choose the course program and the tasks themselves, on the basis of the learners’ needs. A good English textbook is the best adviser and friend to someone who teaches the language of international communication. The choice of particular educational material is fundamental and is carried out depending on the age, level and personal preferences of students. Today we have a lot of English textbooks on offer but not all of them are as effective and useful as they are considered to be.
Foreign language textbooks serve as a guide for language teachers. It is of vital importance that textbooks provide a systematic and comprehensive cultural perspective for both teachers and learners. Before 1950, textbooks were designed to serve linguistic purposes, containing grammatical rules, isolated sentences, etc. However, from 1950 the social context, everyday life, and the nature environment of the target culture have been gradually introduced. This means that cultural aspects in foreign language textbooks are getting more important in the language teaching. And the development of learners’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC)in the acquisition of a foreign language has become an integral part of teaching/learning process. Byram considers ICC as quite a complex concept defined as the learner’s ability to ensure a shared understanding by people of different social identities, and their ability to interact with people as complex human beings with multiple identities and their own individuality [1]. In other words, intercultural competence is about understanding and interacting with people belonging to different cultures.
Scholars have emphasized the importance of curriculum and materials in enhancing students’ ICC (Nault, 2006; McKay, 2002, Alptekin, 2002; Xiong & Qian, 2012) [2], [3], [4], [5]. According to these scholars, teaching materials that depict different cultures around the world are necessary for students to gain ICC. Moreover, Naultemphasizesthe importance oftextbooks and other instructional materials and activities such as movies and role plays in promoting cross-cultural communication [2]. Nault argues that English educators “should integrate world cultures into their materials and lessons to promote true linguistic/cultural awareness and international understanding among themselves and their students” [2,325].His emphasis on global cultures is shared by others; McKay, for example, stresses that materials should be used in such a way that students are encouraged to reflect on their own culture in relation to others, thus helping establish a sphere of interculturality[3]. Similarly, Alptekin suggests that textbooks should emphasize the diversity of cultures; for example, materials should depict how people of different cultures greet one another in relation to age and gender, and what kinds of food they eat in the different seasons of the year. The use of such materials would assist students to reflect on, compare, and contrast their own languages and cultures in relation to other people’s languages and cultures in order to become successful intercultural communicators [4].
The explanations above have focused on the importance of teaching materials that depict divergent cultures around the world in order to allow students to critically analyze the similarities and differences between cultures. In that way, students will be encouraged to explore their own cultural beliefs, values and practices in relation to others’, which in turn, will enable them to develop ICC. This supports the argument that cultural self-awareness is vital in understanding other people’s cultures [6], [7].
However, according to investigations of Shin, Eslami, and Chen, it was revealed that cultures of the Inner Circle Countries (i.e., the US, the UK) dominate in most English textbooks. They found that cultural content presented was mainly factual cultural information, particularly tourism and surface-level culture. In this way, learners’ opportunities to critically explore and discuss deep-level culture (such as beliefs and values) and to reflect on their own cultures were neglected [8].
In our research we would like to find out the preferences of the EL tutors concerning textbooks that enable to develop learners’ ICC at the English language courses in Kostanay. The purpose of this study is to establish the top-3 textbooks frequently chosen by private English tutors, the top-10 topics that prevail in most English textbooks and the presence or absence of cultural component inthe selected textbooks and in teaching process.Subsequently, we would like to analyze the level of culture presented in these textbooks and provide some recommendations to teachers
concerning the learners’ ICC development.
MAIN PART
This study can be considered significant in different ways. Firstly, it may offer a list of comprehensible textbooks that can be applied in the ELT classrooms. Secondly, the findings of this study may increase the intercultural awareness among the ELT learners and tutors. Thirdly, it may give an idea to the tutors how to improve their teaching in a way to promote ICC.
The methodology of the research included the following stages: the study of the theoretical issues and the best practices in developing and choosing ELT resources; developing and conducting the survey to demonstrate the current situation; analysis of the survey results and providing recommendations on ICC development textbooks and activities.
The survey, as a written questionnaire, was chosen since it is the most efficient instrument to gather more information in a short period of time. It was fielded among English tutors in October in 2019. 50 participants were involved in questionnaire. All of them were either self-employed or worked for language centers in Kostanay. They were given an application form containing 5 questions (see below). Two out of five questions were open-ended, one question required choosing from 23 given categories, the rest two questions were yes/no questions and there was an opportunity to give comments to the answer. These questions were made to define 1) top-3 textbooks 2) top-10 topics 3) presence or absence of cultural component in English tutors’ classrooms.
Questions
1)What literature do you use as a main textbook at the English courses you teach?
2)What literature do you use as supplementary material applied to the main program?
3) Circle or underline the topics that, in your opinion, are more often found in the textbooks you use. Suggest your options for themes (if any)
Sports, Travel, Free time, Music, Festivals, Environment, Work, Education, Food, Culture, Law, Money, Transport, Health, Experience, Lifestyle, Shopping, Ambitions, Friendship, Mass media, Clothes, Family, Hobby
4)Do you think it is necessary to focus students’ attention on the culture of their target language country? Why?
YES/NO
5)Do you compare the culture of the target language and the culture of the student’s country at your English classes? If so, how?
YES/NO
The data received from 50 survey forms are presented below. First, we analyzed the answers to the first question. Some of the English tutors provided more than one option. In result, 22 different textbooks were mentioned by the English tutors and then calculated.According to the results, three textbooks are considered to be the most frequently used- New Total English, New English File and Inside Out.
As for the second question, the vast majority of the respondents take additional information from the internet resources, and only small minority uses other textbooks in addition to the main course book. Two of the teachers did not write anything under the second question. Here are the data from the questionnaire: Grammar Spectrum, Survival English, English for Life Speaking, 240 English topics, videos and audio from the internet(you-tube particularly), Face to face, Teaching Game puzzles, Total English, games-applications from Google play, books for extensive reading, cartoons, Everyday living words, songs, films, worksheets from esl-lab.com, en.collective.com, www.britishcouncil.com, Solutions, Activate your English.
Third question allowed selecting 10 topics that are the most common according to the 50 interviewed respondents. None of them proposed their own topic that might not be amongst the written variants.
Sports — 42, Travel — 36, Free time — 36, Music — 25, Festivals — 14, Environment — 21, Work — 25, Education — 18, Food — 36, Culture — 18, Law — 10, Money — 10 , Transport — 20, Health — 18, Experience — 10, Lifestyle — 18, Shopping — 25, Ambitions — 7, Friendship — 7, Mass media — 18, Clothes — 18, Family- 25, Hobby – 28.
Everybody circled the answer “YES” in question 4. Most of them left comments which can be introduced as follows:
1) To develop respect and appreciation of the target language;
2)To keep learners interested and motivate them to study this language;
3)To broaden learners’ horizon and develop tolerant attitudes; 4)To develop ICC;
5)To develop secondary linguistic identity.
100% of answer “YES” was also given to question 5. Some English tutors described different types of work they do in the classroom to compare the target language culture with learners’ culture of origin. For instance, 1) Discussion of peculiarities, similarities and differences between the cultures; 2) comparison of traditions, customs, national holidays, national food, etc; 3) speculation about untranslatable phrases; 4) making up schemes and Eiler’s circles.
As it can be observed from the results, the most common English textbooks, that are preferable among the private tutors teaching at the English language courses in Kostanay, are New English File (NEF), New Total English (NTE) and Inside Out (IO). All of these textbooks are from theEnglish UK publishers. The textbooks suppose the use of communicative approach in teaching,
aiming at developing the student’s spoken language skills.
Each of the textbooksmay represent a comprehensive training course. The full set includes the
course(student’s) textbook, workbook, CDs with audio and video recordings, and the teacher’s book. Thus, this training course allows students to improve all their skills: they will learn to speak, read, write in English and will understand foreign speech by ear. Any of the presented textbooks is divided into unit lessons, each of which contains the following sections:
1)Speaking — questions for discussion, exercises for the development of oral speech.
2)Listening perception of speech — audio recordings and assignments to them.
3)Reading — several texts that are taken as the basis for the development of speaking and learning new words.
4)Writing — tasks for training written language.
5)Grammar — a block explaining any aspect of grammar in a clear language, as well as exercises to practice the theory.
6)Vocabulary — a selection of new words and phrases, as well as exercises to train their use.
7)Pronunciation — exercises with audio recordings to train the correct pronunciation of the sounds of the English language [9], [10], [11].
The presentation of the material in these manuals is the same: a textbook outlining the material from simple to complex. The training courses presented are suitable for teens and adults.
They use only modern topics relevant to real life, words and phrases which are the most frequently used by native speakers, interesting texts and dialogs, effective exercises for the development of oral speech. Grammar is explained briefly and simply, sentence structures are used by native speakers in everyday communication.
All three textbooks contain the most popular topics which were revealed due to the present survey (Sports, Travel, Free time, Music, Environment, Work, Food, Shopping, Family, and Hobby). Their titles may vary from book to book and from level to level but the main idea of the themes remains the same.The prevalence of these topics indicates their relevance in the framework of communication. Each unit includes either communication situation or functional language to encourage students to speak English and, as a result, develop communicative competence.
Moreover, almost all these units involve the information about other cultures such as British, American, Australian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese and so on. Through these topics learners increase their erudition about these countries, their people, the people’ traditions and countries’ history. They get used to people’s accents while listening to them, observe their behavior in definite situations and highlight some peculiarities belonging to their culture. There are also tasks which enable learners to speculate about their own culture and find out similaries and differences with the cultures presented in the unit under discussion.
To develop learners’ ICC so that they will be able to introduce their own culture requires providing learners with additional teacher’s help. Mentioned above textbooks and topics do not have any information about our country and our people. Therefore, on the one hand, it contributes to understand other cultures better and communicate with their people easier, but, on the other hand,
makes it hard and sometimes impossible to equally represent students’ own culture.
Though the survey revealed the most frequently employed textbooks, it aslo shows that all the private English tutors interviewed within present research use additional resources to fill those gaps thatthe textbooks may have. They include special tasks which focus learners’ attention on our culture and create imaginary situations where the information about foreign culture and native culture can be mutually used and practiced by their students.
CONCLUSION
From all has been said it follows that language and culture are closely associated and interrelated. Hence, the teaching of culture in foreign language classrooms should always be present. Only if culture is integrated in language teaching, the whole teaching process will be complete. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce culture-related issues in foreign language textbooks because they serve as basic sources of knowledge. The study disclosed the three textbooks to be the most frequently used — New Total English, New English File and Inside Out. However, an English textbook cannot be the only one source in teaching/learning process. Besides, modern English textbooks contain prevailing information only about English speaking countries and little information about other countries. It is impossible for textbook writers to cover all the topics and include all the cultures in their books. That is why it is crucial for teachers to implement other material and other activities that can facilitate the students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC).The 100% affirmative replies to the question on necessity to focus students’ attention on the culture of their target language country and comparison of the target culture and the culture of the students’ country at the English classes emphasize the need for recommendations on ICC development activities given below.
Thus, we can conclude that the suitable way to teach English and develop students’ ICC is through the combination of English textbooks and teachers’ own manual. Private English teachers at English language courses in Kostanay show their awareness of the necessity to apply cultural component in their classroom.
Some recommendations can be suggested to English teachers concerning the learners’ ICC development:
1. Comparison method (concentrates on discussing the differences between the
native and target cultures ) [12];
2. Cultural assimilation (learners are presented with a critical incident, which would probably be misunderstood. Learners are given several possibilities, from which they choose the one which they think is correct);
3. Cultural capsule (demonstrates, for example one custom, which is different in two cultures. It can be accompanied by visual aids to show differences and a set of questions for class discussion.) [12];
4. Cultural island (contemporary posters and pictures of actors, singers, famous places should be put on the walls in the classrooms instead of grammar charts, vocabulary posters which are nor really attractive to learners) [12];
5. Reformulation (retelling a story to a partner in his/her own words paying attention to specific features connected to the topic) [13];
6. Prediction (engages students actively by finishing a half told story, guessing the contents of an article or a book based on the headlines, predicting the contents of a topic based on a few pieces of information)[13];
7. Role play (learners can practice situations in a restaurant, shop, bus station,
etc);
8. Treasure hunt (involves searching for certain items set, for example people, dates, events in a news or magazine article. Drama is a technique where learners act out short scenes of misinterpretation and also clarification of something that happens between two cultures, which is caused by misunderstanding the target culture).
REFERENCES
1 Byram M., Gribkova B., Starkey H. Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching. A Practical Introduction for Teachers. [Online]. 2005. Available: http://lrc.cornell.edu/director/intercultural.pdf
2 Nault D. Going global: Rethinking culture teaching in ELT contexts. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 2006, 19(3), 314e328.
3 McKay S. L. Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
4 Alptekin C. Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT journal, 56(1), 2002. pp. 57-64.
5 Xiong T., Qian Y. Ideologies of English in a Chinese high school EFL textbook: A critical discourse analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2012, 32(1),75e92
6 Byram M., Gribkova B., Starkey H. Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2002.
7 Newton J., Yates E., Shearn S., Nowitzki W. Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching: Implications for Effective Teaching and Learning. In Report to the Ministry of Education
Ministry of Education, New Zealand, 2010. Retrieved from
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/curriculum/76637/introduction
8 Shin J., Eslami Z. R., Chen W. Presentation of local and international culture in current international English-language teaching textbooks.Language, Culture and Curriculum, 2011, 24(3), 253e268.
9 www.pearson.com
10 www.newenglishfile.ru
11 www.insideout.net
12 Hughes G. An argument for cultural analusis in the second language classroom. In:
Valdes, M. (ed.) Cultural bound. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
13Cullen B. Practical Techniques for Teaching Culture in the EFL Classroom. In: The Internet TESL Journal. Vol. 6, No. 12. ( 2000). [online]. [cit.20.8.2018]. Available on the internet:
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Cullen-Culture.html.
Я.С. Франюк1, Е.М. Кандалина2
Ағылшын тілі оқулықтары оқушылардың мәдениетаралық коммуникативтік құзыреттілігін дамыту тәсілі ретінде
1,2А.Байтұрсынов атындағы Қостанай мемлекеттік университеті, Қостанай қ., Қазақстан
Оқулық көптеген тілдік бағдарламалардың негізгі құрамдас бөлігі болып табылады.Ол оқушылар алатын тілдік материалдың негізгі және жалғыз көзі, сонымен қатар сынып ішінде және одан тыс орын алатын тілдік практиканың негізі болып табылуы мүмкін.Осы зерттеу Қостанайда ағылшын тілі курстарын оқытатын жеке репетиторлар арасында жүргізілген сауалнамаға сәйкес ағылшын тілі бойынша ең көп таралған оқулықтар мен тақырыптарды анықтау әрекеті болып табылады. Сонымен қатар, алынған нәтижелер оқулықтарда бағытталған мәдени мәселелерді анықтау үшін пайдаланылады.Демек, оқушыларға тілдік аудиторияда мәдениаралық мазмұнды коммуникативтік құзыреттілікті қалыптастыруға көмектесетін мәдени сипаттағы мәселелерді шешудің ықтимал тәсілдері ұсынылады.
Я.С. Франюк1, Е.М. Кандалина2
Учебники английского языка как способ развития межкультурной коммуникативной компетенции учащихся
1, 2Костанайский государственный университет им.А.Байтурсынова,
г.Костанай, Казахстан
Учебник является ключевым компонентом большинства языковых программ. Он может даже представлять собой основной и, возможно, единственный источник входного языкового материала, который получают учащиеся, и основу языковой практики, которая происходит как внутри, так и за пределами класса. Настоящее исследование является попыткой определить самые распространенные учебники и темы по английскому языку в соответствии с опросом, проведенным среди частных репетиторов, преподающих курсы английского языка в Костанае. Кроме того, полученные результаты используются для выявления культурных вопросов, на которые ориентированы учебники. Следовательно, предлагаются возможные способы решения вопросов культурологического характера, которые могли бы помочь учащимся выстроить более содержательную межкультурную коммуникативную компетенцию в языковой аудитории.