CULTURAL CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE ELT TEXTBOOKS IN LIBYA

Abstract

Language and culture are two crucial factors in building any civilization; they undoubtedly work alongside and have influenced each other for generations. This study aims to measure to what extent do the ELT textbooks applied in Libya reflect the cultural references; source culture, target culture, international culture, and culture free. It also observes the cultural categories that have had the most emphasis and are subdivided into subcategories highlighted afterwards. In order to achieve this, this research analyses two ELT textbooks used in Libya. The first book being analysed is the Second Preparatory English textbook out of the ELT series English for Libya which is applied for the 8th grades in the Libyan public schools. Whereas the second textbook is the first level of the Face2Face series which is Face2Face Starter and it is published by the Cambridge University Press and applied by the language teaching institutions in Libya. In order to analyse the cultural content in the textbooks, the study used the model prepared by Ramirez and Hall (1999). The research ended up with many interesting findings that clarified the dominance of the source culture, the humble presence of the international and free culture, in addition to a poor existence for the target culture. Out of the percentages of the cultural categories and subcategories, the study shows the Libyan textbooks’ high interest in the Social, Personal, and Environmental categories at the expense of the Political and Religion categories. Whereas the international version of the ELT textbook Face2Face Starter tends to focus on all these categories evenly and in a balanced way except the Religion category which shows less attendance in general