A cross cultural analysis of english textbook for grade 11 and suggestions of supplementary activities for students’ cross cultural awareness

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---TRẦN THỊ HẢI A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH TEXTBOOK FOR GR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-TRẦN THỊ HẢI

A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH TEXTBOOK

FOR GRADE 11 AND SUGGESTIONS OFSUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIESFOR STUDENTS’ CROSS-CULTURAL AWARENESS

PHÂN TÍCH SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH LỚP 11

TỪ KHÍA CẠNH GIAO VĂN HÓA VÀ ĐỀ XUẤT

CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG BỔ TRỢ ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN NHẬN THỨC GIAO VĂN

HÓA CỦA HỌC SINH

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60.140.111

HANOI – 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ HẢI

-A CROSS-CULTUR -AL -AN -ALYSIS OF ENGLISH TEXTBOOK

FOR GRADE 11 AND SUGGESTIONS OF

SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS’ CROSS-CULTURAL AWARENESS

PHÂN TÍCH SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH LỚP 11 TỪ KHÍA CẠNH

GIAO VĂN HÓA VÀ ĐỀ XUẤTCÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG BỔ TRỢ ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN NHẬN THỨC GIAO VĂN

HÓA CỦA HỌC SINH

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching MethodologyCode: 60.140.111

Supervisor: Prof Nguyễn Quang, Ph.D.

HANOI - 2014

I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled:

“A cross-cultural analysis of English textbook for grade 11 and suggestions ofsupplementary activities for students’ cross-cultural awareness”

is the result of my own work for the degree of Master of Arts in English LanguageTeaching Methodology at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University ofLanguages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and thisthesis is the total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material

in this thesis has not been submitted for any other university or institution wholly andpartially

Hanoi, 2014

Trần Thị Hải

I wish to take this opportunity to express my heart felt thanks to the lecturers ofthe Faculty of Post - Graduate Studies who help me a lot during the Master Course.Last but not least, I owe my parents and my husband their continuous support.Their patience and love have helped me go beyond what sometimes looks like aninsurmountable task.

This study was intended to examine the cultural content presented in Englishtextbook for Grade 11 and suggest some activities for raising students’ cross-culturalawareness

To achieve the above mentioned objective, the research based on quantitativemethods was conducted in order to give a brief account of how culture is treatedaccording to the modified checklists designed by Cortazzi and Jin, Hirsch et al andChastain. The main findings of the research were as follows: (1) the textbook can beclassified as an international target culture textbook in which students are exposed tovarious kinds of cultures such as world culture, international culture and Vietnameseculture (2) the textbook reveals elements of cross-cultural comparison that promotestudents’ cross-cultural awareness (3) the research suggests some supplementaryactivities among a number of activities used for culture teaching in classrooms thatmay be used to develop students’ cross-cultural awareness

The author hopes that the findings of the research may support teachers to

adjust their cultural teaching content and help textbook editors in the next reform ofhigh school textbooks

FLT: foreign language teaching

SLT: second language teaching

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationale of the study……… 1

2 Objectives of the study…… ……… 2

3 Research questions……… 2

4 Scope of the study……… 3

5 Methods of the study……… 3

6 Structure of the study……… 3

PART B DEVELOPMENT……… 5

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND……… 5

1.1 Foreign language textbooks and treatment of cultural content………… 5

1.1.1 Classification of cultural content in foreign language textbooks……… 5

1.1.2 Cultural topics and categories in foreign language textbooks………. 7

1.1.3 Checklists for analyzing the cultural dimension in foreign language textbooks……… 8

1.2 Culture teaching in foreign language teaching……… 10

1.2.1 Principles for culture teaching……… 10

1.2.2 Common approaches to the teaching of culture……… 11

1.2.2.1 The mono-culture approach……… 11

1.2.2.2 Comparative approach……… 11

1.2.2.3 Other approaches……… 12

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY……… 14

2.1 Material under analysis……… 14

2.2 Research questions……… 16

2.3 Research methods……… 17

2.4 Data collection procedures……… 17

2.5 Checklists for the cross-cultural analysis in the study……… 17

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS……… 19

3.1 Research question 1……… 19

3.2 Research question 2……… 21

3.3 Research question 3……… 23

3.3.1 Influence of factors the choice of activities when teaching culture to Grade 11 students in Vietnam……… 24

3.3.2 Supplementary activities for developing Grade 11 students’ cross-cultural awareness in Vietnam……… 24

3.3.2.1 Elmore’s 25 activities………

3.3.2.1 Peck’s activities……… 27

PART C CONCLUSION……… 30

1 Summary of main findings……… 30

2 Implications and recommendation……… 31

3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research……… 32

References……… 33

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Vietnam has been a member of World Trade Organization (WTO) since 2006.This integration is both opportunity and challenge Thanks to this decision,Vietnamese people are easy to seek a job and gain higher salary It, however, requireslabour source with high level and effective communication in an internationallanguage In order to understand each other, people need to understand not only eachother’s language, but also each other’s culture This can open the door to betterinternational understanding and ensure peaceful relations between nations

Language and culture are interdependent and interactional Language mayreflect many factors of culture and culture affects the way language is used in turn AsBremberk (1977:14) states “to know another’s language and not his culture is a verygood way to make a fluent fool of one’s self” Thus, learning culture is obviously avital factor for Vietnamese students for success in communication because secondlanguage learning is second culture learning Without the study of culture, foreignlanguage instruction is inaccurate and incomplete In modern FLT/SLT materials,textbook editors rightly emphasize the close relationship between learning a languageand learning its culture It is suggested that just learning four skills (speaking,listening, reading and writing) may cause the improper understanding of the meanings

of a language

In 2006, a new curriculum which defines English as a compulsory subject, is

“instrumental to the access of world science and technology as well as worldcultures” was developed by Ministry of Education and Training (MOET, 2006).MOET designed new English textbooks for high schools to foster students’ four skillsand provide students with overall knowledge of English-speaking countries, theirpeople and cultures in 2002 One of the objectives of English teaching and learning is

to enhance students’ cross-cultural awareness Since their nation-wideimplementation in the school year 2007-2008, a great deal of research have been

carried out to evaluate English textbook of grade 10 as well as to find out how thetextbook are actually implemented or the difficulties that teachers and students have

to face when teaching and learning by the new textbook However, most of thesestudies have dealt with the teaching and learning of the four language skills which arebelieved to be new for both teachers and students at grade 10 and grade 11 And oneresearch on cross-cultural factors for grade 10 was conducted Hence, there is still alack of research on cross-cultural factors in English textbook of grade 11

For the aforementioned reasons, the author has decided to conduct this study

It is hoped that this study will help students and teachers realize cross-cultural factorswhich may be implicit or explicit in the textbook, contribute some immediateactivities to develop students' cross-cultural awareness

2 Objectives of the study

This research was carried out to serve the following objectives:

 To identify cultural treatment and categories revealed in the textbook

 To suggest supplementary activities for Grade 11 students’ cross-cultural awareness so that English learning and teaching become more interesting and effective

2 What type of cultural categories does Grade 11 English textbook introduce and to what extent?

3 What type of supplementary activities should be used to improve Grade 11 students’ cross-cultural awareness?

4 Scope of the study

The thesis focuses on Reading and Listening passages in Grade 11 Englishtextbook (developed by Hoang Van Van et al., Vietnam Education Publishing House,2007) The tasks in Reading and Listening sections and the content of Speaking,Writing and The Language Focus sections (including illustrations) are also employedfor analysis when and if appropriate

In the national high school English syllabus, there are no appropriateguidelines for cultural instructions although the stress on students’ cross-culturalawareness is emphasized It is believed that a good cross-cultural evaluation of atextbook can be made when the goal of cultural instructions is clearly stated in thesyllabus Therefore, the study just makes an attempt to conduct a small-scale cross-cultural analysis of the Grade 11 textbook It does not provide a general assessment

of the whole set of Grade 10, Grade 11 and Grade 12 English textbooks forVietnamese high schools

5 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the objectives of the research, the study resorts toquantitative method The analysis is conducted according to the two modifiedchecklists proposed by Cortazzi and Jin, Hircsh et al., Chastain

6 Structure of the study

The thesis consists of three main parts:

Part A: INTRODUCTION – All the academic routines required for an MA thesis arepresented

PART B: DEVELOPMENT – This is the focus of the study and consists of 3 chapters

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

Chapter 2: Methodology of the study

Chapter 3: Results and discussions

Part C: CONCLUSION: Review of the findings, implications and limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research are given.

PART B DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND1.1 Foreign language textbooks and treatment of cultural content

1.1.1 Classification of cultural content in foreign language textbooks

Textbooks and instruction materials are often used by teachers and languageinstructors since they are considered essential constituents in EFL/SLT AsHutchinson & Torres (1994:315) suggest “the textbook is an almost universal element

of English language teaching.” They suggest that textbooks can support teachersthrough potentially disturbing and threatening change processes, demonstrate newand/or untried methodologies, introduce change gradually, and create scaffoldingupon which teachers can build a more creative methodology of their own A veryindispensable assumption about using textbooks in FLT/SLT is that they reflect theculture through their cultural content Dunnet, Dubin and Lezberg (1986) posit thereare two types of textbooks: one-dimensional and two-dimensional One-dimensionaltextbooks focus on the target language culture and leave few possibilities forcomparison, “unless the teacher injects a question, such as, ‘This is what American

do What do you do?’ or ‘This is the American view What is your view?” (Dunnet,Dubin and Lezberg (1986: 153) While two dimensional textbooks encourage cross-cultural understanding, they treat culture-related themes from two differentperspectives, thus stimulating both comparison and contrast between the target andthe source cultures Later on Moran (2001: 15-

18) offers four categories of cultural content that should be introduced to students where cultural content is identified as:

- Knowing about, relating to cultural information – facts about products, practices and perspectives of the target culture as well as students’ own;

- Knowing how, referring to cultural practices in the everyday life of the people of the target culture;

- Knowing why, constituting an understanding of fundamental cultural perspectives– beliefs, values and attitudes;

- Knowing oneself, concerning the individual learners’ self-awareness In other words,students need to understand themselves and their own culture as a means to comprehend thetarget language culture.

Regarding culture-related teaching materials and textbooks in Englishclassroom, Cortazzi and Jin (1999) provide a novel look at the sources of culturalinformation They classified the sources of culture textbooks into source culturetextbook (learner’s own culture), target culture textbook (any English-speakingcountries where English is spoken as a first language), and international target culturetextbook (English-speaking or non-speaking English countries around the worldwhere English is not used as a first language) They distinguish three types of culturalinformation to be presented in foreign language textbooks:

- Source culture textbooks refer to the textbooks which present language learners’ ownculture Usually, these are the textbooks that are produced at a national level for a particularcountry Preparation of the language helps learners to introduce their own culture to English-speaking visitors is the main purpose of this kind of textbooks

- Target culture textbooks usually focus on one or two target cultures, such as theUnited Kingdom, United States The textbooks of this category are the most popular instructionmaterials in the EFL context The reason for integrating target culture into English classroom lies

in firstly that learning a target culture will nurture student motivation and develop their attitudestoward language learning Students using such textbooks might have more competence whentalking to people from the target culture or visiting the target country They could also be aware

of cultural differences between their own culture and the target culture, so students’ awareness ofthe target culture is thus enhanced

- International target culture textbooks involve textbooks that include a wide variety ofcultures set in English-speaking countries or in countries where English is not a first or a secondlanguage, but is used as an international language, namely lingua franca Students not only learnthe target culture from such textbooks but

also learn about more than one culture Their knowledge of other cultures mayenhance student’s motivation, develop their attitudes toward language learning, andraise their awareness of other cultures.

1.1.2 Cultural topics and categories in foreign language textbooks

Researchers have made many attempts to find out relevant cultural issues todeliver in foreign language textbooks It mainly focuses on investigating what aspects

of culture students should learn in order to be able to function in that culture orinteract with people from that culture They proposed some frameworks to describespecific categories of cultural knowledge that should be taught to students

Brooks (1986: 124-128, first published in 1964) compiled 62 possible culturaltopics which could be used as the contents of brief cultural presentations in thelanguage classroom He also draws a considerable attention to a comparison of astudent’s view of life with that of an individual in the new speech community

Under each topic he provides some example questions so that teachers couldelaborate the topic according to students’ age and experience For example, under thetopic “Soft drinks and alcohol” he presents the following questions:

What types of nonalcoholic beverages are usually consumed by young peopleand adults? What is the attitude towards beer, wine, and spirits? What alcoholicdrinks are in frequent use at home and in public?

(Brooks 1986: 126)Similar to Brooks, Chastain (1988:303-304), based on the idea ofanthropological definition of culture, proposes thirty-seven categories of culturethemes for foreign language learners To develop students’ comprehension of thevalues behind the categories, Chastain suggests using comparison and contrast whenintroducing these culture themes There are 37 topics in his list, including Geography,Contemporary Science, Commonly Known History, Clothing, Transportation, Home,Economic System, Earning a Living, Retirement, Money, Services, Health andWelfare, Family, Courtship and Marriage, Population, Politics, Death, Crime, Humor,Holidays, Leisure Activities, Correspondence, Language,

Education, Courtesy Phrases, Good Manners, Eating, Social Interaction, Non-verbalCommunication, Religion, Ecology, Vacations, Travel, Daily Routines, Pets, ThePress, Meeting Personal Needs.

Durant (1997:31) also emphasizes the comparative approach He details list ofcultural topics which comprise food, customs, the legal and judicial system, holidays,housing and gardens, social attitudes, and forms of political expression He alsoposits there is no need for any fixed list or fixed order of themes Teachers couldchoose topics depending on students’ interest and suggestions

The above cultural topics may lead to an unsystematic provision ofinformation Therefore, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:Learning, teaching, assessment (CEF) (2002) groups into a list of seven categories.These include everyday living (e.g., food and drink, holidays and working practices),living conditions, (e.g., housing conditions), interpersonal relations (e.g., classstructure, family structures and relations between generations), values, beliefs andattitudes (e.g., social class, wealth, regional cultures, minorities and arts), bodylanguage, social conventions (punctuality, dress and behavioral and conversationalconventions) and ritual behavior (e.g., birth, marriage and death)

Stern (1992) focuses on six categories which an average language student islikely to require: places, individual persons and way of life, people and society ingeneral, history, institutions and, finally, art, music, literature and other achievements

He claims that a student needs to have “some sense of physical location to whichrelate the target language” To teachers, he suggests that they can overcome thevastness of material by careful selection and differentiated approaches

1.1.3 Checklists for analyzing the cultural dimension in foreign language

textbooks

In order to help teachers to pick up teaching materials that best meet thedemand of the course and students’ needs, there have been various checklists foranalyzing foreign language textbooks However, some scholars such as Byram

(1997:71), Cortazzi and Jin (1999:201) and Skopinskaja (2003:44) contend that insome checklists the cultural studies dimension is missing Cortazzi and Jin (1999:202)add that other checklists address only certain aspects of culture (for example,stereotypes) or varieties of target cultures (for example Britain or the USA).Stillothers put aside uncomfortable social realities such as unemployment, poverty andracism.

Byram (1989) and Cortazzi and Jin (1999) offer Huhn’s (1978) list There are sevencriteria to deal with the cultural content of foreign language textbooks in his list:

Cultural information must be accurate and contemporary;

The question of stereotypes must be handled critically;

It must provide a realistic picture of the foreign society;

It must be free from ideologies;

Facts should not be presented in isolation;

The historical material should be presented explicitly;

Later on Cunningsworth (1995), the social and cultural context in foreign languagecourse must be understandable to students and they should be able to interpret “therelationships, behavior, intentions, etc of the characters portrayed in the book” Heasks the following questons”

 Are the social and cultural contexts in the textbook comprehensible to the students?

 Can students interpret the relationship, behaviours, intentions etc of the characters portrayed in the book?

 Are women given equal prominence to men in all aspects of the textbook?

 What physical and character attributes are women given?

 What professional and social positions are women shown as occupying?

 What do we learn about inner lives of the chracters?

 To what extent is the language of feeling depicted?

 Do the textbook characters exits in some kind of social setting, within a social network?

 Are social relationships portrayed realistically?

Thanks to Huhn’s (1978) list of criteria, Cunningsworth’s (1995) checklist or recentchecklists like Sercu’s (1998) set of questions, Kilickaya (2004), it can be seen thatscholars have developed them in a more systematic way However, it cannot bedenied that the textbook assessment is more or less subjective, difficult to answer andtime-consuming for researchers who want to develop a questionnaire based on thosechecklists

1.2 Culture teaching in foreign language teaching

1.2.1 Principles for culture teaching

When students learn a foreign language, their ultimate aim is to understand theways people do things and why they do them With traditional teaching methods,students are focused on the improvement of speaking, listening, reading and writingskills as well as the teaching of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar These maylead to misunderstanding in some real situation or communicate less effectively, oreven cause culture shock to students Scholars have been ongoing concerns about theteaching of culture in foreign language instructions Like teaching other aspects inforeign language instruction, culture teaching requires organized development of itsteaching principles Kramsch’s principles may be considered the most noticeable one.Kramsch (1993: 205-206) warns against a simple “transmission of information” aboutthe foreign culture and its members’ worldviews She highlights what she calls “newway of looking at the teaching of language and culture” These include:

- Establishing a sphere of interculturality, which means that teaching culture is

not transferring information between cultures but a foreign culture should be put in relation withone’s own The intercultural approach includes a reflection on both cultures

- Teaching culture as an interpersonal process, which means replacing the

teaching of facts and behaviors by the teaching of a process that helps to understand others

10

- Teaching culture as difference, which means considering the multiculturality

and multiethnicity of modern societies and looking at various factors like age, gender, regionalorigin, ethnic background, and social class In other words, cultures should not be seen asmonolithic

culture to other disciplines like anthropology, sociology and semiology

Kramsch (1993) concludes that these “lines of thought lay the ground for a much

richer understanding of culture than heretofore envisaged by the majority of language teachers”.

1.2.2 Common approaches to the teaching of culture

Researchers or scholars have observed, researched and classified approaches

to the teaching of culture in different ways in which some of them have lost ground,others have had dominant positions In very broad terms, they divided ways to teachculture into two: those focusing only on the culture of the country whose languagestudied is called the mono-cultural approach, and those based on comparing learners’own and the other culture is called the comparative approach

Risager (1998:246) calls the mono-cultural approach the foreign-culturalapproach It focuses on the culture of the country where the language is spoken and isbased on the concept of a single culture It seems to be a shortcoming today because it

is lack of the relationship between cultures The aim of the teaching is to developnative speaker communicative and cultural competence This approach was prevalentuntil the 1980s and is looked down nowadays since it does not consider learners’understanding of their own culture

The comparative approach puts the stress on the relationship between theforeign culture and the learners’ own Buttjes and Byram (1991:13, cited in Edginton2000: 136) state that instead of providing learners with “a one-way flow of culturalinformation” they should be encouraged to reflect on their own and

foreign culture With the comparative approach, students learn that people can dothings by many ways, and their way is not the only possible one Learner’sknowledge, beliefs and values combining with those of other culture are addressed toform a successful communication Byram and Planet (2000:189) state that “thecomparative approach does involve evaluation but not in terms of comparison withsomething which is better, but in terms of improving what is all too familiar.”Comparison gives learners a new perspective of their own language and culture.Through this, students discover both similarities and differences of their own andother cultures As a result, they can enhance knowledge, understanding andacceptance.

- The theme-based approach

Theme-based or thematic approach to the teaching of culture relies on certainthemes, for example, family, humour, beauy, liberty, value, religion, symbolism,ceremony, love and education, which are seen as typical of a culture This approachendeavours to indicate the values and relationships in a given culture and helpslearners to understand it better Nevertheless, it might be difficult for them to seeindividual people and understand social processes and values from this perspectiveand could lead to stereotyping (Visniewska-Brogowska 1999: 61) Theme-basedapproach has some flaws because it provides students with an unsystematic view ofthe target culture

- The task-oriented approach

This approach is based on learners’ own research Different from the previous one, it

is characterised by co-operative tasks Learners work in pairs or small groups onvarious aspects of the other culture They share and discuss their findings with others

in order to form a more complete picture Finally, learners interpret the informationwithin the context of the other culture and compare it with their own

- The skill-centered approach

The skill-centred approach aims at developing learners’ skills, which they may need

to deal with issues related to communication among cultures Therefore, thisapproach is beneficial for people needing to live in the target-language community Itdoes not merely mean knowledge of the other culture The skill-centered approachaddresses awareness and skills as much as content, their similarities as well asdifferences