From cultural alienation to intercultural competence in efl textbooks

Abstract EN

The study highlights the development in attitudes towards cultural contextualization in three locally designed Algerian EFL textbooks; Think it Over (1989), Comet (2001), and New Prospects‟ (2007) used in High School to teach pre-university students.

While the first two textbooks broadly aim at developing the learners‟ communicative competence, the last one shifts objectives and aims at developing the learners‟ intercultural competence as stated by its designers in the foreword.

Thus, this study tries to explain, through the analysis of the reading texts used in the materials, how the included cultural content which was mostly targeting the foreign cultures (Other) changes to include some aspects of the learners‟ local culture (Self) in an attempt to include intercultural aspects.

It further investigates how the contact of cultures, previously seen as negative because leading to the cultural alienation of the learners, is reinforced in the recent textbook (New Prospects) as a means to develop the learners‟ intercultural competence allowing them to function in crosscultural contexts.

The analysis consists of the examination of the representations of the Self (learners‟ local culture) and the Other (Foreign language culture) as conveyed by the reading texts selected by the designers as teaching materials.