CULTURAL CONTENT REPRESENTATION IN READING MATERIAL FOR ENGLISH SPECIALIZATION IN ELT TEXTBOOK

Textbooks have become an important and primary resource for teachers
when it comes to teaching language. The representation of cultural content in
reading material for English Specialization in ELT textbook as a focus in this
research. The researcher used qualitative design, specifically content analysis of
textbooks. This study focused on analyzing cultural content types and cultural
content themes in “Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris Peminatan Ilmu-Ilmu Bahasa dan
Budaya” textbook published by Mediatama. The researcher examined all of the
cultural content types and themes presented in the textbook's 9 chapters and the
researcher found 179 items in reading material. To determine what cultural types
are represented in this textbook, the cultural contents are divided into three
categories: source culture, target culture, and international culture (Cortazzi &
Jin, 1999). To determine what cultural themes are represented in this textbook,
the cultural contents are divided into two categories: Big "C" and Little "c" (Xiou,
2010). According to the research, the target cultural content type is most
prevalent in this textbook. The investigation discovered that 53% of cultural
content type refers to the target culture, 45% refers to the source culture, and 2%
refer to the international culture. Big "C" cultural content themes are generally
dominated by History with 20% and the lowest cultural are social norm and
architecture with 1%. Holiday and lifestyle aspects dominate Little "c" with the
same percentages of 6%. Hobbies and gesture have the lowest percentages with
the same percentages of 0%. It is related to Kramsch's theory (2008) that target
culture and source culture should be combined in teaching and learning language
in order to comprehend a target culture. Interaction with native speakers or
authentic text requires learners to construct their own meanings rather than
having educators simply transfer information about people and culture.
Keywords: ELT textbook, cultural content type, cultural content theme