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
