Investigating The Cultural Aspects in EFL Textbooks A Case Study of the NorthStar Intermediate Textbook

This study investigated the cultural aspects in the NorthStar textbook which has been taught since 2008 at An-Najah University as a compulsory course . The study addressed the following questions:
1-What are the Western cultural aspects that are implied in the NorthStar , Intermediate Textbooks?
2-To what extent is the foreign culture included in the NorthStar Intermediate level?
3- To what extent are the Arab-Islamic cultural aspects included in the NorthStar Intermediate level ?

The study revealed that the textbook involved different types of cultural aspects and that the frequency of some cultural aspects was higher in some units depending on the main theme of the unit. These frequencies ranged between 22 and 274 and the religious aspect had the lowest frequency, while the social aspect had the highest frequency. Moreover, it was found that the textbook did not only focus on different aspects of a foreign culture but it also dealt with different cultures. The content analysis revealed that the most frequent cultural aspects were related the American culture which indicated an obvious bias towards the foreign cultural aspects in general and the American cultural aspects in particular at the expense of the Arabic –Islamic culture as no unit that talks about Arabs or Muslims or any Arab or Islamic country except the mentioning of the word “Arab” which was mentioned only once in the textbook and in a way that even displeases the Arabs.

In the light of the results, the researchers recommended analyzing and evaluating the content of EFL textbooks of foreign authors to be sure that they do not include cultural aspects that might go against our Arab-Islamic culture. Therefore, careful attention should be paid to how the others are presented and how to filter the undesirable cultural aspects that in a textbook. Finally, the researchers called for EFL national curricula at the Palestinian universities.