Culture in the EFL textbooks in primary school

Tuđa, Tea. (2017). Culture in the EFL textbooks in primary school. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature. [mentor Geld, Renata].

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Abstract

This study investigates the representation of culture in English textbooks for primary schools in Croatia, written by both Croatian and British authors. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of culture in English textbooks prescribed by the Ministry of Education and the differences between Croatian and British textbooks. This is done using three models for analysing culture. The first, based on Cortazzi and Jin (1999), investigates which type of culture is the most dominant: source, target or international culture. The second investigates which elements of culture, as proposed by Yuen (2011, cited in Arnis 2015), are the most frequent; products, practices, perspectives or persons, and, the third model examines whether Big “c” or small “c” is more prominent in the textbooks, as proposed by Paige at al.(1999). Research shows that the target culture (British) is the most dominant, with practices being the most frequent element of culture and instances of Big “c” being more numerous than small “c”. British textbooks put more emphasis on culture, especially on the small “c”, or the everyday lives of native speakers.

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