A Comparative Intercultural Approach to English School Textbooks of Middle-Eastern Countries: The Cases of Iran and Egypt

Abstract

Due to the importance of intercultural communicative competence together with English language, this study investigated four types of cultural content: topics, cultural dimensions, international/intercultural issues, as well as cultural references in Vision I, the Iranian secondary textbook and Hello I its Egyptian counterpart. One of the means by which culture can be manifested, introduced, interacted with, and contemplated upon is through textbooks to which a larger number of EFL students have access. The present analysis is carried out based on content analysis and a modification of three models (Hall, 2002; Sercu, 2000; Risager, 1991). Overall, the results show that Vision I has a more limited scope of cultural content compared to Hello I. The analyses further signify a lack of in-depth cultural information within both textbooks. In Hello I, there were more instances of culture compared to Vision I, however, it is suggested that the incorporation of culture could be vaster and deeper to provide students with a more comprehensive picture about other cultures. In Vision I the scope of cultural content representation was rather limited. It is, thus, suggested that along with taking some measures for including a greater array of cultural content in Vision I, curriculum developers need to decide to include more depth to the cultural content. Thus, more concentration and attention should be exerted for developing students’ intercultural competence through the inclusion of an in-depth cultural content which introduces to students different cultures and turns them into individuals who are able to efficiently communicate with others.