RESEARCH ON THE (LACK OF) IMPLEMENTATION OF IC IN EFL AND SFL COURSEBOOKS

teaching of culture on the one hand, there is a lack of practical work that would demonstrate that the methodological proposals and practices for the design of foreign language coursebooks that are in line with the intercultural approach are in reality put into practice (not only in Slovenia, but also in other countries), on the other. Manjarrés (2009: 155) exposes the general absence of FL textbook evaluation in terms of the promotion of IC. For this reason, in recent years, certain individuals have taken matters into their own hands and have carried out their own analysis. Níkleva (2012: 182) has analysed several Spanish, British and Bulgarian textbooks that were published between 1992 and 2010 and has found out that the frequency of cultural contents does not increase in the contemporary FL teaching materials, in spite of the majority of textbooks containing a special chapter dedicated to culture. Garcia (2005, as cited in Çetin Köroğlu 2016: 622) has analyzed a number of quite recently published SFL coursebooks and concluded that they offer an insufficient amount of opportunities to develop IC. Níkleva (2012: 170) also mentions some of the previous studies that confirm the necessity to improve the treatment of cultural contents in SFL coursebooks, among which she exposes Ares' (2004) investigation that proved that the cultural competence finished in second place, but IC was last on the scale out of all competences. In short, the majority of EFL and SFL coursebooks, sadly, still cannot meet the new demands of intercultural teaching (Sobkowiak 2016: 697). Due to the fact that the FREPA (2012) and the preliminary version of the Companion Volume (2018), strongly promoting the incorporation of IC in the teaching materials, have already been published some years ago, we would now like to research whether the EFL and the SFL coursebooks currently in use in the Slovenian secondary schools adopt this not-so-new approach.

28 2.7.2 PURPOSEFUL EXCLUSION OF IC IN FL COURSEBOOKS?

Tomlinson (2008, as quoted in Çelik and Erbay 2013: 339), who also attests to the exclusion of cross-cultural contents, believes this shortage is related to the issue of »teaching to the test«, which means that coursebooks are most commonly designed to prepare learners for standardized exams that, unfortunately, never assess cultural values. Coste et al., (1997: 23) admit that educational institutions are, sadly, “not open to all cultures”. What is more, they are convinced that schools can (and they do) reject and deny “a linguistic and cultural reality”

when this actuality does not go in line with the “national linguistic policy” (ibid.). According to these researchers, what truly interests the governments is profit and the humanities cannot generate it like science or economics can (Nussbaum 2010: 13, as cited in Moldestad Knudsen 2016: 14). The professed disregard of the humanities by the politicians, consequently and supposedly, brings the exclusion of IC and, thus, the destruction of critical thinking, emphatic understanding and democratic principles, all of which has allegedly led to a “world-wide crisis”

in education (ibid.: 13-14). Vuk Godina (2021) even speaks about a systematic dumbing down of pupils and students in order to maintain the power elite. Besides, in order to discuss stereotypes and taboos, it is necessary to wrestle with potentially conflictive elements that can affect a teacher’s and a student’s identity, an idea, which displeases teachers, and, which is perceived as politically incorrect or socially delicate by the national authorities (Jímenez Ramirez 2019: 246-248). The above mentioned opinions should be dealt with caution, as, stemming from my own first-hand personal experience, I can state totally the opposite: FL education at the faculty, has, first and foremost, given me the gift of critical thinking and the educators at both English and Spanish department have continuously strived to instil this capacity in all students throughout the entire study cycle. Therefore, in order for the mentioned viewpoints to be accepted as facts, we would need more solid arguments and actual proofs that would allow us to take those opinions as an undeniable truth.

Jímenez Ramirez (ibid.) adds another perspective that explains why IC is excluded from FL coursebooks. He states that even more shocking are some teachers’ ingrained (of course, by the national authorities) convictions that the teaching of IC is purposeless, as interculturality can only be developed by actually living in the target culture (ibid.). If we consider that those teachers do not even grasp the basic idea of the IC, this finding, however, as absurd as it sounds, seems perfectly logical. Perhaps the last (among the most obvious ones), but definitely not the least crucial factor that strongly influences the coursebooks' design is the

29 market, which demands products sold in the most wide-ranging space possible. That being so, these materials rarely encompass learners' cultural identity and do not perceive it as part of the learning process (Pulverness 2007: 429).

2.7.3 LACK OF INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING THE CULTURAL TOPIC SELECTION IN EFL AND SFL COURSEBOOKS

Another burning issue is that there does not exist an agreement about which cultural contents have to be included in the coursebooks (Illescas García 2015: 67). Due to this discord, the coursebook designers are given carte blanche to select whichever materials they prefer. Such level of liberty in decision-making has brought disastrous results, since some subjective preferences can and do generate doctrinaire or stereotypical behaviours. Liv Eide (2012, as cited in Moldestad Kundsen 2016: 7), for instance, found out in her PhD dissertation focusing on Spanish textbooks that the texts reflect the target cultures “on a superficial level” and that very few Latin-American cultures are included in the analysed coursebooks. Ihm (1996, as quoted in Moldestad Kundsen 2016: 7), on the other hand researched EFL coursebooks and was, as well, unpleasantly surprised by his findings, as the materials not only failed to “reflect the multicultural structure of the American community” and were dominated by British and American cultures (Xiao 2010, as quoted in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 225), but also transmitted

“prejudiced images” of several other (English speaking) cultures. Alptekin (1993, 2002, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 223) strongly criticizes prioritizing target culture materials, mostly depicting British and American cultures or in the case of SFL coursebooks Spanish culture, as neither English belongs exclusively to British or American culture, nor Spanish is reserved only for Spanish culture any more. What he advocates is the integration of intercultural material, as learners need to gain knowledge of the outer countries as well in order to develop IC skills, such as the desired attitudes towards other cultures (ibid.). The other outcome of this confusion regarding the list of obligatory cultural contents is that on account of the controversial nature of IC, the coursebooks opt for excluding the contents that “explain the context […], that provide information about regional or social varieties of language, taboos, stereotypes or conversation structures” exemplifies Jiménez Ramírez (2019: 248). We are alluding to elements that could create conflicts and the acquisition of those would, consequently, affect the teachers' and students' identity (ibid.). Níkleva (2012: 171) feels that our students should definitely learn about stereotypes and on the way nurture critical thinking

30 as well.⁹ If learners are familiarized with the existing stereotypes that concern them and their nation or nationality, they will have better predispositions to confront the way the target culture will treat them (ibid.). They will be perfectly aware of all the attitudes they carry but they will also be capable of destroying these stereotypes (ibid.). The last negative consequence of this latitude in choosing cultural topics is that the same cultural topics are “visited and revisited each year adding on a little more vocabulary each time”, which causes tremendous boredom of learners, who are “stuck in the role of tourist/consumer” for the entire secondary schooling (Callaghan 1998: 6, as quoted in Byram 2003: 68).

2.7.5 LACK OF METHODOLOGY OF CULTURE TEACHING

The other obstacle on the way of developing IC in FL coursebooks is that a great number of EFL and SFL coursebooks lack a clear “methodology of culture teaching” (Dema and Moeller 2012: 76) or, in other words, instructions concerning the implementation of cultural tasks in the learning environment (Berna Böcüa and Razı 2016: 234). The first consequence of this absence is that the cultural sections included in the SFL and EFL coursebooks still remain isolated and decontextualized chapters that are separated from the linguistic contents in a didactic unit (Níkleva 2012: 170, Dema and Moeller 2012: 79, Moldestad Knudsen 2016: 67).

This way, one of the most urgent problems to tackle with is the absence of an effective strategy for integrating language and culture (Dema and Moeller 2012: 76). The second and most serious issue is that EFL and SFL coursebooks explore cultures only implicitly (Sobkowiak 2016: 698-710). The tasks are designed in such a way that “learners are expected to read a text on a specific aspect of a foreign language and do the accompanying exercises focusing on a comprehension check or vocabulary practice” (ibid.), which requires recalling only factual knowledge (Ennis 1985, as cited in ibid.). Students are, thus, not asked to solve any problems or perform any activities comprising analysis, observation or assessment and are deprived of the possibility to discover a foreign cultural reality on their own (ibid.). It seems that whenever EFL and SFL coursebooks include cultural contents, they somehow as a rule focus primarily on the “deadly five F’s” of culture, as the Bicultural Inclusion Support Services (n.d.) denominate the conglomeration of food, facts, flags, fashion and festivals. Äijälä (2009: 51) found out in her analysis of secondary school EFL coursebooks that most of their activities revolved around

9 Sobkowiak (2016: 697) in his article proves that intercultural and critical thinking skills are strongly

interrelated. He discovered an inadequate capacity of quite a few EFL coursebooks to develop learners' critical thinking.

31 knowledge of cultures. In other words, they put at the centre of attention the superficial big

“C” elements—knowledge and skills (Níkleva 2012: 170, Xiao 2010, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 225). An investigation carried out by Paige et al. (1999, as cited in Manjarrés 2009: 146) revealed that students were, surprisingly or not, perfectly satisfied with »the culture as knowledge approach«, in which learners are tested only to show their ability to memorise the facts they had been provided by the teachers via their coursebooks. In this type of testing learners know exactly what to learn and how to achieve good marks (ibid.), which, without doubt, pleases most students. However, learners are not aware of the fact that such type of knowledge-based testing and the existence of coursebooks that fail or even refuse to move away from the so-called “N-bound perspective, with its emphasis on norms” (Manjarrés 2009:

146) rob them of a deeper understanding of contents and, most importantly, of the development of the ability to think critically, which is, according to Vuk Godina (2021) the quality of real, meaningful and uncontrolled learning, a necessary component of attitudes and the precondition of achieving IC, clarifies Sobkowiak (2016: 698). The side effect of focusing on knowledge and neglecting critical thinking is, then, as well ignoring the little “c” elements—

attitudes (Níkleva 2012: 170, Xiao 2010, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 225). Níkleva (2012:

170), Xiao (2010, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 225), Çelik and Erbay (2013: 347) have recently also scientifically confirmed that EFL coursebooks most heavily neglect precisely attitudes or perspectives. What we would like to find out in our MA thesis is whether this is as well the case in the contemporary coursebooks we have chosen for our analysis.

2.7.6 THE SOLUTIONS

First, as to the issue of stereotypes certain coursebooks contain, teachers should help learners to recognize the superficial aspects of the texts. This procedure is known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) and if students possess this skill, they will be able to interrogate an authentic text, engage with it critically (Byram 2003: 72-73) and develop what Byram labels as the fourth component of IC: “critical cultural awareness”. Concerning the lack of methodology of culture teaching, it should be naturally logical FL coursebooks’ designers refrain from swamping their coursebooks with the activities that focus merely on the IC resource of knowledge, as IC consists of three resources, not one. As it is with learning in general, the same goes for IC matters: the teaching of certain realities is most successful when learners actively discover them and not when they are being spoon-fed facts (Allen 2004, Grittner 1996, Tavares and Cavalcanti 1996, as cited in Dema and Moeller 2012: 81). Sándorová (2016: 187), thus,

32 proposes a systematic inclusion of discussion and writing activities in the FL coursebooks.

Ennis (1985, as cited in Sobkowiak 2016: 698-710) believes these tasks should confront learners with problems they can only solve using mental abilities of processing, interpreting data, “analysing various points of view” before making any assessment. As Sándorová (2016:

187) and Byram et al. (2002, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 223) summarize textbooks should make the students reflect on and critically think about the cultural input through activities of comparing and contrasting their first culture and target culture (in a non-competitive way).

The final proposed strategy of how to successfully incorporate attitudes and develop IC in coursebooks is, thus, building students' awareness of their source culture (ibid., Byram et al.

2002, as cited in Böcüa and Razı 2016: 223).

2.7.7 WHY COURSEBOOKS SHOULD NOT EXCLUDE ATTITUDES?

We have once mentioned the significance of the development of attitudes; nonetheless, in order to clarify any doubts as to the importance and the inclusion of the affective dimension in EFL and SFL coursebooks, we will, to a certain extent, have to repeat what we have previously stated. It is no secret that language coursebooks reflect values that language learners can observe in real life (Tikiz Ertürk 2020: 145) and can even instruct students on how to apply these values to the world outside the classroom (Komalasari and Saripudin 2018, as cited in ibid.).

Coursebooks should (if anything) develop attitudes, beside knowledge and skills, as empathy towards, tolerance of, acceptance of and openness towards others, as well as the ability to change perspectives and to overcome misunderstandings are the precondition to avoid stereotypes and misjudgements and to peacefully coexist and successfully interact in foreign languages with members of other cultures (Çetin Köroğlu 2016: 630). Rosenbusch (1997: 35) alerts that few coursebooks offer help in »identifying an underlying perspective, but he believes that »no one—teacher or student […]—should [ever] feel embarrassed by being unable to [do so]«. Coursebooks should, therefore, constantly confront students with problems, because if there are not any, “then there is no point in thinking critically”

(Sobkowiak 2016: 698-710).

2.7.8 WHY DO COURSEBOOKS EXCLUDE ATTITUDES?

According to Morain (1997), as cited in Dema and Moeller (2012: 79) attitudes are the most

“intangible” resource of IC and, therefore, “cannot be easily introduced” neither by

33 coursebooks nor by teachers. As textbooks present information on attitudes, beliefs and values in the target culture only on rare occasions, they make the teacher's task of developing IC even more demanding (ibid.). Çelik and Erbay (2013: 347) add that perspectives are more difficult to teach as they represent the abstract aspects that are visually less appealing than the “visible facets of culture”, such as cuisine, tourist attractions and celebrities. But this lower part of the iceberg model also symbolizes the dangers of what one cannot see and what might occur provided that this less visible component of culture is ignored in FL teaching (Moldestad Knudsen 2016: 13). There, are, of course, many more reasons for the negligence of attitudes, especially political and economic ones—we had already touched upon those in the previous chapters.

2.7.9 CURRENT POSITIVE TRENDS IN EFL AND SFL COURSEBOOKS REGARDING IC

Illescas García (2015: 8) confirms that the Spanish publishing houses do make an effort in adapting to the FREPA's and Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes' mentioned guidelines but in the same breath he emphasizes that we are still far from reaching satisfactory results. One of the very positive tendencies is that the appearance of cultural stereotypes has drastically been reduced or even disappeared in the latest EFL and SFL coursebook editions (Níkleva 2012: 182). We can also observe a greater effort in instilling empathy as an integral element of IC into learners (ibid.). Böcü and Razı (2016: 225), finally, report coursebooks provide “more definable cultural content” and »better structured activities, which may somewhat raise learners' intercultural awareness«. We can, thus, conclude that there are certain changes for the better, but there is still not enough discussion among material writers and publishers about devoting more attention to the least tangible and the most important (as we have learned in the chapter Attitudes as the Foundation of IC) component of IC—attitudes.

2.8 THE IGNORANCE OF TEACHERS AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO PREDICATE INTERCULTURALITY

Even if the teaching materials can be characterized by cultural input, this does not automatically indicate their exploitation (Skopinskaja 2003: 52, as cited in Sándorová 2016:

189). The responsibility for how and if these contents will be put to use, primarily, falls back on the teachers. It is true that Byram’s primary objective of composing the model of ICC was to incentivize educators to incorporate the critical evaluation of intercultural situations in their planning of the learning process and to establish it as the ultimate aim of learning (Byram 2012, as cited in Schneider 2020: 195). However, an investigation from 1996, in which

34 participated 210 randomly selected FL teachers in New York (Moore 1996, as cited in Dema and Moeller 2012: 80), exposed a plethora of problems; first, only 26% of high school FL teachers taught culture in their lessons and, second, more than half of the interviewees admitted that reading notes in the coursebooks was their most common activity for dealing with cultural contents, which indicates that coursebooks are the teachers’ most important resource for teaching cultural facts and that students are only passively learning about the target culture. What is more, Jiménez Ramírez (2019: 248) has revealed that grammar persists in being the backbone of the FL classes, which means that the number of the teachers who simply keep cultural matters at arm's length remains large, primarily, due to the lack of knowledge that would allow teachers to acquaintance their learners with cultural topics.

Kramsch (2013: 59) has, as well, discovered that FL teachers still prefer teaching vocabulary and grammar over culture as they feel incompetent (ibid., Byram and Risager 1999, Young and Sachdev 2011, as cited in Schneider 2021: 195) of teaching foreign culture and they are frightened that they might promote stereotypes that the coursebooks contain as a consequence of the demands of the market. What is even more astonishing is that there exist FL learners who are against learning about the target culture as some believe that the language classroom is not appropriate for learning about values and culture while others feel that their L1 identity will extinguish if teachers put an excessive amount of emphasis on culture (ibid.). An additional source of the teachers’ anxiety is the coexistence of various stances on culture teaching that focus either on the study of texts, on the theoretical reflexion about the language or on the usefulness of language as a means of communication, which generates paradoxical theoretic principles and confusion among teachers regarding the teaching and learning of IC (Jiménez Ramírez 2019: 246).

The real challenge for the FL teachers, thus, lies in overcoming their fear of teaching intercultural contents. This anxiety can only be cured with a proper training (Äijälä 2009: 5) that would teach instructors how to explain and incorporate intercultural matters into their classes. Consequently, they would also obtain the means and the confidence to select the appropriate coursebooks¹⁰ and by teaching learners how to “critically question meanings” in textbooks and the media (Galante 2015: 34) they would also combat the second issue of

10 Slovene secondary school teachers have the latitude to decide on their own coursebooks, but from a public

10 Slovene secondary school teachers have the latitude to decide on their own coursebooks, but from a public