Sociocultural Appropriateness in Korean Middle School English Textbooks

The notion of communicative competence has been reinterpreted since its inception and related teaching methodology has been accordingly developed. However, the ways it has been manifested through the language input available in an EFL context has not been thoroughly investigated. In this light, the present study attempts to evaluate the representation of communicatively competent language use, with special reference to sociocultural aspects, in officially sanctioned textbooks for the middle school level in the EFL context of Korea. Listening scripts ― the main source of spoken language in textbooks provide quasi-authentic dialogues which are examined for sociocultural appropriateness. An evaluation, based on a specially designed taxonomy, shows that sociocultural appropriateness is not well-presented and that errors are due to an array of factors including but not limited to textbook writers’ lack of native L2 intuition and LI(culture) transfer. While several aspects that impede textbook writing are attributable to constraints such as time and vocabulary limits this cannot justify sociocultural inappropriateness. The present study, thus, calls for more sociocultural considerations especially when writing textbooks which are a vehicle in conveying native speaker norms to learners in an EFL setting.