Related Previous Studies on Cultural Content in English Textbooks

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F. Related Previous Studies on Cultural Content in English Textbooks

There are some studies on the same cultural content analysis conducted in some different countries, including Indonesia. The researcher narrows down some relevant studies in the context of Asia instead of European or British Union in order to acquire a better cultural connectedness with the Indonesian context. This selection is also undergone by picking up the relevant countries where English is taught as a Foreign Language, like Indonesia. Munandar and Ulwiyah recently investigated how cultural content is incorporated into Indonesia‘s high school SMA ELT textbooks from intercultural perspective. By evaluating six ELT textbooks which comply the 2006 content standard of English stipulated by Indonesian National Board of Education Standards BSNP namely Interlanguage and Developing English book series. This study finds out that there is an extensive use of local references, which help the learners to adopt the language material, adapt it to the context of language use, and language learning and serve their own purposes of communication. However, these books have shortcomings deal with an overgeneralization of target culture and the native speaker that could lead to cultural stereotypes therefore here is the role of the English teacher should be called. 72 Though this research discussed the intercultural competence, but the units of analysis are limited to the themes of the books. It did not analayze to the content in each themes chapters therefore it was prone to be overgeneralizing. Hermawan and Noerkhasanah also checked into the dissemination of cultural content in English textbooks at primary schools in Bandung, Indonesia, referring to the classification proposed by Cortazzi and Jin namely source culture, target culture, and international target culture. 73 This study found out that target 72 Muhammad Iwan Munandar and Imaratul Ulwiyah, ―Intercultural Approaches to the Cultural Content of Indonesia‘s High School ELT Textbooks‖ in Cross-Cultural Communication, Vol. 8, No. 5, 2012: pp. 67 —73. 73 Martin Cortazzi and Lixian Jin , ―Cultural Mirrors, Materials and Method in the EFL Classroom ‖ in Eli Hinkel, Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999: pp. 204 —205. 157 culture the culture of country where English is spoken as a first language is more salient and disseminated in the textbooks while source culture the culture where the learners are originated from is presented in the form of characters, places and locations discussed in reading passage, and rituals. 74 This research , however, only focused on the reading passages and visual illustrations in the textbooks for primary schools, whereas other media such as: sound recording and writing tasks were not analyzed. In line with Hermawan and Noerkhasan ah‘s study, Ekawati and Hamdani also review the role of culture in the English textbooks and the methods used in the classroom. The study finds that English textbooks reflect not only the target culture, but also source culture and international culture. This presentation of culture is sensitive and may cause a cultural mismatch. For example, in some elementary school textbooks which are marketed worldwide, it was portrayed a multicultural nature of American society —husband as being responsible for child care and house work, while their wives are breadwinners. The researchers, however, think that this cultural mismatch should be handled by ethnographic stance and explicit teaching. 75 Yuen in his case study entitled ―The representation of foreign cultures in English textbooks‖ investigated the representation of foreign cultures in Hongkong secondary schools. By using four elements of culture such as: products, practices, perspectives, and persons, he analyzed the content of culture of EFL textbooks. Further he stated that the English textbooks are comm only providing the students with the ‗tourist‘s perspective‘ which appeal the students with cultural products of entertainment, travel, and food but less in the depth of cultural material. 76 The similar research was revealed by the previous study by Juan who investigated the cultural content of EFL materials in China. It 74 Budi Hermawan and Lia Noerkhasanah, ―Traces of Cultures in English Textbooks for Primary Education ‖ in Conaplin Journal Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol.1 No.2 January 2012: pp.49 —61. 75 Dian Ekawati and Fakry Hamdani, ―Cultural Mirrors: Materials and Methods in English as a Foreign Language ‖ in International Journal of Basic and Applied Science, Vol. 01, No.1 July 2012: pp.53 —59. 76 Ka Ming Yuen, ‖The Representation of Foreign Cultures in English textbooks ‖ in ELT Journal Advance Access March 2011: pp.1—9. 158 suggests that the representation of target culture western culture placed the prominent role in the textbooks while Chinese culture is minorly represented. Additionally, intercultural competence is not focused in the textbooks thus comparisons and contrasts between cultures are rarely found. 77 HB Zakaria and Hashim checked into the cultural content of English language materials in Malaysian high school context and found out that there was insufficient incorporation of Malaysian cultural aspects in English learning materials. This qualitative study recommends that language learning materials must be able to present the language learners‘ own culture and all the cultures that surround them. Moreover, these materials should be useful and effective both as English learning materials as well as a tool for promoting cultural knowledge and understanding among Malaysian students. 78 One of the most related studies was the research conducted by Rohmah who addressed some major weakness in the resources EFL materials currently available in MTs in East Java and Mataram. It is followed by a larger research by LAPIS-ELTIS conducting a need analysis of EFL materials for MTs students. 79 This research, however, did not look deeper into the cultural content of the EFL materials English textbooks unlike what this research is aimed to. Cultural content is just one small part among the other criteria in her textbook evaluation. In addition, a study by Zacharias examined the tendency of college lecturers in choosing English textbooks. It suggests that the lecturers prefer textbooks from international publishers instead of locally published ones. It is caused by the fact that internationally 77 Wu Juan, ―A Content Analysis of the Cultural Content in the EFL Textbooks ‖ in Canadian Social Science. Vol. 6, No. 5 September 2010: pp. 137 —144. 78 Zakaria and Hashim , ―Local Cultural Aspects in the KBSM English Language Materials ‖ in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Journal, pp.1—10, available at http:eprints.utm.my107301LOCAL_CULTURAL_ASPECTS_IN_THE_KB SM_ENGLISH.pdf 79 Zuliati Rohmah, ―EFL Materials in Madrasah Tsanawiyah: What Do They Really Need? ‖ in TEFLIN Journal, Volume 20, Number 1 February 2009: pp. 104 —117. 159 published books are regarded as providing correct, authentic English in the original context 80 . On the other hand, locally published materials are seemed to be not readily used in term of the less complete package teaching guide, audio file, video file, student‘s books, exercise books. Summing up these relevant previous studies, this current research uses and combines similar research design with Munandar and Ulwiyah, Hermawan and Noerkhasanah, Ekawati and Hamdani, Yuen, and Zakaria and Hashim in term of classification of culture presented in the English textbooks. Additionally, this research adds this classification used in Yuen‘s study which are: products, practices, perspectives, and persons. 81 Lastly, types of cultural information by Adaskou, Britten Fahsi is utilized to classify the cultural representation. 82 Lastly, to investigate the appropriateness of English textbooks to the EFL teaching at Madrasah Tsanawiyah, the researcher looks back into the MONE‘s document UU No. 20 tahun 2003 and Byram‘s classification of intercultural communicative competence to determine the level of intercultural competence presented by the textbooks. These theories are developed into instruments of research. The discussion about research design, instruments, and data analysis method is presented in chapter III. 80 Nugrahenny T. Zacharias, ―Teachers‘ Beliefs about Internationally- Published Materials: A Survey of Tertiary English Teachers in Indonesia ‖ in RELC 36.1 2005: pp. 23 —27. 81 Ka Ming Yuen, ―The Representation of Foreign Cultures in English textbooks ‖ in ELT Journal Advance Access March 2011: pp. 1-9. 82 K. Adaskou, et, al. ,‖ Design Decisions on the Cultural Content of a Secondary English Course for Morocco ‖ in ELT Journal Volume 441 January 1990: pp. 3-10. 160

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

As the previous chapter encompasses the theoretical basis of the research, this chapter covers the research design, time and place of research, respondentsinformants, unit of analysis, data collection methods, as well as data analysis method.

A. Research Method

This research was conducted by using qualitative design, particularly content analysis of textbooks. Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the context of their use 83 . Miles and Huberman classify content analysis as archival strategies 84 where the main research subject relates to archives or documents and the researcher does not give treatment to the research subject non participatory strategies. The difference between content analysis and discourse analysis is that content analysis searches for meanings when discourse analysis aims to find out how these meanings are created 85 . Therefore, this research was aimed at gaining an in depth data about the cultural content of in-use English textbooks in DKI Jakarta, as well as the implication of this cultural presentation towards the intercultural competence. Content analysis is conducted to explore the nature of categories and types of cultural information, types of culture, types of culture senses, and type of cultural elements. Further, Tuomi and Sarajärvi in Lappainanen 86 state, there are three different approaches to content analysis: data-based, theory-guided and theory-based approaches. In the data-based approach, the aim is to form a theoretical schema based on the data. 83 Klaus Krippendorff, Content Analysis. An Introduction to Its Methodology Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004, p. 18. 84 Mattew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman, An Expanded Coursebook Qualitative Data Analysis London: Sage, 1994, p. 6. 85 Taniia Lappainanen , ―Presentation of The American Culture in EFL Textbooks: An analysis of the cultural content of Finnish EFL textbooks for secondary and upper secondary education University of Jyväskylä: Unpublished master thesis, p. 35. 86 Ibid., p.36.