Analysing Culture and Interculture in Saudi EFL Textbooks: A Corpus Linguistic Approach

Autor/in	Almujaiwel, Sultan
Titel	Analysing Culture and Interculture in Saudi EFL Textbooks: A Corpus Linguistic Approach
Quelle	In: English Language Teaching, 11 (2018) 2, S.31-43 (13 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1916-4742
Schlagwörter	Computational Linguistics; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction; Foreign Countries; Computer Software; Cultural Awareness; Teaching Methods; Textbook Content; Semitic Languages; Vocabulary; Correlation; Culture; Communicative Competence (Languages); Elementary School Students; Middle School Students; High School Students; Saudi Arabia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Linguistics; Computerlinguistik; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Fremdsprachenunterricht; Ausland; Cultural identity; Kulturelle Identität; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Lehrbuchtext; Arabisch; Hebräisch; Wortschatz; Korrelation; Kultur; Communicative competence; Languages; Kommunikative Kompetenz; Sprache; Middle school; Middle schools; Student; Students; Mittelschule; Mittelstufenschule; Schüler; Schülerin; High school; High schools; Oberschule; Studentin; Saudi-Arabien
Abstract	This paper combines corpus processing tools to investigate the cultural elements of Saudi education of English as a foreign language (EFL). The latest Saudi EFL textbooks (2016 onwards) are available in researchable PDF formats. This helps process them through corpus search software tools. The method adopted is based on analysing 20 cultural topics (nodes), namely climate, clothing, eating, education, family life, geography, history, holidays, humour, language, leisure, meeting people, currency, pets, population, religions, social occasions, sports, transportation and vacations. Function words, verbs, adjectives and punctuation were removed from the files of Saudi EFL textbooks. This guarantees searching for only cultural content words that are associated with the 20 selected cultural topics. The processing of the associations helps identify the type of culture quantitatively: local culture, target culture and interculture. The results show that local Arabic cultural words are more frequent than target English cultural words, and the latter is more frequent than the intercultural words. This highlights a lack of intercultural examples in the whole corpus of Saudi EFL textbooks. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01