An Analysis of Primary School English Textbooks for Integrative Cultural Competence

This study aims to discuss how to implement integrative cultural competence in EFL English textbooks by analyzing sociocultural competence of the target language in listening dialogues and cultural sections of the primary school English textbooks for sixth graders. For the purpose, the study adopted the categories of four main factors proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) that suggest subcomponents of cultural elements in the perspective of communicative language use. The result of the analysis indicates several cultural aspects as follows: First, in certain cultural factors, considerably biased pattern is detected and most of them just delivered simplified cross-cultural knowledge and sociocultural background information. Second, as the other components are presented relatively less frequently, it might lead to an insufficient understanding of cultural contexts and its proper language use. Lastly, based on the results of the analysis on the cultural components in the textbooks, the study offers pedagogical implications for designing English textbooks concerning integrative cultural competence.