Cultural Content in Junior High School English Textbooks

drs.ari sumitro, m.m; prof.dr.h. gunawan suryosaputro, m.hum; dr. tri wintolo apoko, m.pd;

This study was aimed at analyzing the cultural content of English textbooks used at Junior High School and it’s implication in teachers’ awareness of the importance of teaching culture as well as their cultural knowledge.
This research was conducted by using qualitative design, particularly cultural content analysis is textbooks. Three series of English textbooks used 7th, 8th and 9th grad of junior high schools namely “ When English Rings a Bell” were chosen as the subjects of research. Content analysis was employed by using some checklist. Theories of culture by Adaskou, et al (1990); Cortazzi & Jin (1990); and Yuan (2011) were used to develop the
checklist. Additionally, teachers’ questionnaires were chosen as instruments in the collection of data since teachers are the parties involved in using the textbooks. Five English teachers who are currently teaching English for 7th, 8th and 9th grade students at SMPN 1 Babelan became the participants of this study. The analysis of cultural content in English textbook used 7th, 8th and 9th reveals that the cultural component is not addressed adequately; in other words, there is a lack of the target culture in many chapters, and also lack of authenticity concerning the textbook passages and activities which give the students an artificial picture about how the English language is used in different contexts by native speaker. On the basis of the examination of
the data collected from the teachers’ questionnaire in SMPN 2 Babelan, it comes to the conclusion that all teachers are aware of the importance of teaching the cultural aspect, that is, they consider it as an important component for teaching English. Yet, majority of them rarely deal with culture in their classes and even most of them face difficulties when
explaining issues related to the target culture. The reason is that they do not have in-depth knowledge about the English culture to teach it. This was proved through a small simple test about the English culture which most of the teachers failed to complete.