Cultural content of three EFL textbooks: teachers’ and learners’ cultural preferences and cultural themes of textbooks

Cultural content analysis of EFL textbooks has received considerable attention in ELT pedagogy in recent decades. The current study investigated the representation of big “C” and small “c” cultural themes in three common EFL textbooks: Top Notch, Summit and Passages. The frequency analysis indicated that in Top Notch series, small “c” cultural themes of daily life, food, customs/norms and big “C” theme of geography were the most frequent cultural themes; while, in Summit and Passages, the most frequent small “c” cultural theme was values and beliefs. This study also investigated the correspondence between EFL teachers’ and learners’ cultural preferences on the one hand, and the match between their preferences and the cultural content of the books in question. 135 EFL learners and 36 EFL teachers responded to adapted questionnaires. The findings revealed that there were areas of match (mainly in small “c” themes) and cases of mismatch (primarily in big “C” themes) between learners’ and teachers’ preferred cultural themes and the cultural content of the textbooks analysed.