The Frequency of Culture-Specific Elements in the ELT Coursebooks at Elementary Schools in Turkey.

Abstract

Providing cultural elements within the textbook contents is crucial for foreign language learners so that they can attain the authentic language appropriately involving some culture specific expressions that are commonly used in communication. Therefore, it is important for Turkish English learners to understand target culture for effective intercultural interactions. However, most of the course materials at elementary education in Turkey avoid including culture specific expressions as most of the course book writers are not native speakers but Turkish. The present paper pins down this issue by figuring out how much the course books focus on the culture specific expressions in foreign language teaching. To do this, three different randomly selected course books from the 6th, 7th and 8th grades at elementary education in Turkey have been evaluated in terms of the culture specific expressions. After analysing the course books the list and percentage of the cultural expressions will be portrayed.