perspectives upon gender for children. Since children are in the developmental age, they can easily imitate some attitudes in their surroundings, especially
imitating what they have studied in their textbooks. Thus, this current study is going to investigate gender awareness in English
learners‟ textbooks for children in the elementary school.
1.2 Problem Limitation
Due to the time constraint, some limitations are considered in this study. First, the limitation is related to the number of the EFL textbooks. This study only
analyzes four EFL textbooks. Two textbooks entitling English Hooray are published by Erlangga. The other textbooks entitling English for Real
Communication are published by Grasindo.
Second, the EFL textbooks are limited based on the grade. Two textbooks are used for the third graders. The other two textbooks are used for the fourth
graders. The limitation is intended to conduct an efficient study since analyzing all textbooks from grade 1 to 6 is time consuming and exhausting.
Third, the analysis of text is only intended to the written texts appear in the textbooks. The spoken texts which are used to examine and practice students‟
listening skills are not analyzed. It means that recording materials which are mediated by electronic devices are not examined. Once again, it will consume the
researcher‟s time and energy. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
1.3 Problem Formulation
This section presents the problem of the study. The problem is formulated in a research question. The question is what is the level of gender awareness in
English Textbooks for elementary school?
1.4 Research Goals
The main purpose of this study is to find out the level of gender awareness in English textbooks for Elementary school through investigating the attributes
which are used to depict female and male characters in the textbooks. Specifically, the attributes are described through the use of pronouns, nouns, and verbs in the
textbooks. This information gives a big picture how gender awareness appears in EFL materials. Moreover, it leads to what authors‟ beliefs in designing the
textbooks.
1.5 Research Benefits
This study provides some benefits both scientific and practical. The scientific benefit contributes on the ELS English Language Studies knowledge
regarding gender awareness in EFL textbooks. Besides, it gives some implicative benefits to what extent beliefs influence authors in designing EFL textbooks.
Thus, it exposes the way to achieve gender equality in designing EFL materials. Another benefit is related to the practical one. This study may enlighten the
textbook authors, teachers or educators, students, and future researchers. First, for textbook authors, they can use these results to design some English textbook
materials which address gender awareness aspects in those textbooks. Second, for PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
teacher or educators, these results can help them to select the English textbooks which have included gender awareness aspect. Third, for the students, the results
can help them understand more about gender. Fourth, for future researcher, this study can enlighten them to conduct research using other methods, for instance,
they can conduct Research and Development RD study to create an English material which considers gender awareness aspect as one of the criteria.
7
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter consists of two sections of the literature review, namely theoretical review and theoretical framework. In the theoretical review, the
researcher explains some theories employed in the study. Then, in the theoretical framework, the researcher depicts how those theories used to answer the research
problem.
2.1 Theoretical Review
