Course Contents of English Language Textbooks and their Relevance to Learners’ Culture in an Islamic Context

Abstract

The study is an attempt at analyzing the cultural authenticity of the course contents of English as a foreign language at International Islamic University Islamabad. This study assumes that these course contents increase cultural barriers for the learners who belong to a different set of cultural values and religious and educational background. It traces the limitation of foreign textbooks writers because of their unawareness of the local culture and the social, educational and religious environment. The study on the one hand questions the suitability of such textbooks for the learners (mostly from religious institutions) and on the other hand gives proposals for the development of English textbooks based on indigenous or Islamic culture. Usually, the evaluation of course contents is descriptive in nature and is done to describe or find out a problem rather than to address it. To bring an improvement in course contents is the basic goal of course evaluation. Although, it would be irrelevant to manipulate a problem statement for this type of research yet ignoring the student factor in writing English text books and selecting these books without doing a prior research into the needs analysis of the learners can be cited as the main problem which inspired the study. This study adopts both a descriptive as well as a prescriptive approach. It analyses the contents to see what is there in the contents and what is required for the learners from a cultural perspective. On the basis of its two fold description the study has given suggestions as to what should be an ideal situation for the selection, adaptation and development of English language textbooks for the learners. The main hypothesis of the study was that there was no cultural relevance between the objectives of the learners for learning English, their social and educational background and the contents of the course book. The inappropriateness of the theories that advocate the inclusion of target language culture in language courses as an essential factor for teaching and learning English in every situation and for all learners is the secondary hypothesis of the study. The study has narrowed down its focus to the cultural relevance of the course contents being taught at the IIUI, the communication gap between the authors and the target learners, and to give suggestions regarding the possibility to include the learners’ culture in English language courses.   The study adopts a first glance evaluation in the light of guidelines provided by pedagogical theorists and deliberately avoids learners’ response method (in which learners responses are measured) because of the   researcher’s own interest in the impressionistic evaluation. The main purpose of the study was to bring the learners in the lime light of focus to make teaching of English more learners’ centered, to create awareness among the teachers, policy makers and course designers to consider learners needs in the process of textbooks selection and development. The study proves that the themes, setting, characters and worldview, presented in the contents of the book represent a foreign and unfamiliar world for the learners. The study suggests that the learners would be more motivated to learn English if language were presented in the context with which the learners could identify themselves.

Keywords: language, English, Culture, Textbooks, Learners