engleski

The role of EFL coursebooks in raising pupils' cultural awareness: a comparative analysis

Culture is the system of shared beliefs, customs and behaviors that the members of society transmit from generation to generation through learning. It consists of different elements – symbols, language, values and norms. One of the most frequent classifications of culture divides culture as big ‘C’ culture which includes artwork, literature and social institutions, and little ‘c’ culture which includes sociocultural beliefs, assumptions and value system. Both aspects of culture are combined in teaching. Culture also describes and explains traits and characteristics of different groups of people. The classification of an individual as a part of a culture is called cultural identity. Besides cultural identity, an individual possesses personal and social identity. Each individual should also value the development of cultural awareness, which implies raising consciousness about cultural differences and of the individuals within the culture. By raising cultural awareness, an individual develops his/her intercultural competence. Culture and foreign language teaching are closely connected. In today's classrooms, culture is often taught through cultural differences. Materials used for teaching about other cultures are mostly foreign language coursebooks. Even though the focus of today’s foreign language coursebooks is mostly on language teaching, there is no shortage of cultural content. This graduation thesis presents the results of qualitative and quantitative research conducted on some English language coursebooks used in Croatian schools. The goal of the research was to determine the amount of cultural content which Croatian- and foreign-published coursebooks contain and to check whether the cultural content is elaborated enough to raise pupils’ cultural awareness and develop their intercultural competence.

culture, cultural awareness, intercultural competence, coursebooks

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