critical thinking in the intercultural context investigating efl textbooks

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Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching (Dec 2016)

Critical thinking in the intercultural context: Investigating EFL textbooks

• Paweł Sobkowiak

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The multicultural world has made intercultural teaching necessary. It should focus on students’ ability to comprehend quickly and accurately, and then act appropriately and effectively in a culturally complex environment in order to achieve the desired goal. Intercultural competence is important for successful communication across cultures, and so is critical thinking since the two, if they are not “parallel” (Bennett, 2013), at least overlap (Deardorff, 2009). This article tries to shed light on the linkage between intercultural and critical thinking skills and reports on the findings of research done on whether and to what extent EFL textbooks used in Polish schools contribute to fostering critical thinking skills in students. The study analyzed the cultural content of 20 coursebooks to check whether they go beyond merely depicting the target culture, or various foreign cultures, and involve students in practicing critical thinking, that is, prompt them to explore intercultural encounters and processes, and scrutinize how diverse cultures influence their own understanding of reality. The research revealed an insignificant and limited capacity of the textbooks to develop students’ critical thinking.

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Studies in second language learning and teaching, article title, critical thinking in the intercultural context: investigating efl textbooks, title variants, languages of publication, physical description, contributors.

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
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Critical Interculturality and EFL Textbooks: Examining the Tensions

The Revista Guillermo de Ockham provides an immediate and open access to its content, based on the principle of offering the public a free access to investigations to provide a global interchange of knowledge. Unless otherwise established, the contents of this journal has a license with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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This article aims to analyse the relationship between critical interculturality and textbooks for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL). To achieve this, I analysed 94 documents, including articles, dissertations, and book chapters published in several national and international databases in the period from 2013 to 2023. The review of these studies also serves as a means to understand how different scholars have analysed textbooks in their contexts. This article is derived from a doctoral study that stems from my personal and professional interests. The research presents seven tensions that reveal traditional ways of analysing textbooks over decades, the need for deeper critical intercultural views, biased cultural and intercultural representations, uncritical literacy practices, coloniality of being, bilingual policy hegemony, and controlled evaluation, selection, and use of EFL textbooks. All this means that there is a need to consider critical interculturality as an attempt to decolonize traditional ways of teaching at different educational levels of education. The result of this analysis further suggests a research gap regarding critical interculturality and EFL textbooks.

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• Title: Revista Guillermo de Ockham
• Short title: Guillermo Ockham
• SciELO acronym: RGDO
• e-ISSN: 2256-3202
• DOI journal: https://doi.org/10.21500/issn.2256-3202
• Frequency: biannual (January-June) (July-December)

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Critical thinking in the intercultural context: Investigating EFL textbooks Critical thinking in the intercultural context: Investigating EFL textbooks

Summary/Abstract: The multicultural world has made intercultural teaching necessary. It should focus on students’ ability to comprehend quickly and accurately, and then act appropriately and effectively in a culturally complex environment in order to achieve the desired goal. Intercultural competence is important for successful communication across cultures, and so is critical thinking since the two, if they are not “parallel” (Bennett, 2013), at least overlap (Deardorff, 2009). This article tries to shed light on the linkage between intercultural and critical thinking skills and reports on the findings of research done on whether and to what extent EFL textbooks used in Polish schools contribute to fostering critical thinking skills in students. The study analyzed the cultural content of 20coursebooks to check whether they go beyond merely depicting the target culture, or various foreign cultures, and involve students in practicing critical thinking, that is, prompt them to explore intercultural encounters and processes,and scrutinize how diverse cultures influence their own understanding of reality. The research revealed an insignificant and limited capacity of the textbooks to develop students’ critical thinking.

Journal: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching

• Issue Year: VI/2016
• Issue No: 4
• Page Range: 697-716
• Page Count: 20
• Language: English
• Content File-PDF

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Critical thinking in the intercultural context: Investigating EFL textbooks.

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• DOI: 10.14746/SSLLT.2016.6.4.7
• Corpus ID: 56258841

Critical thinking in the intercultural context: Investigating EFL textbooks

Paweł Sobkowiak

• Published 30 December 2016
• Education, Linguistics
• Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching

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26 Citations

Critical thinking and intercultural competence: review, use, and classification of the 21st century skills in intercultural efl education, intercultural teaching in the efl classroom, critical interculturality and efl textbooks: examining the tensions, a window to the future of intercultural competence in tertiary education: a narrative literature review, employing photovoice to raise intercultural sensitivity and critical thinking of male and female iranian efl learners, chinese graduate student understandings and struggles with critical thinking: a narrative-case study, critical thinking within the informatics textbook of the second class of the greek lyceum, integrating intercultural activities into teaching mandarin for international students in china, evaluation of study skills integration into omani secondary school curriculum, impact of critical thinking skills on learning outcome: a review of researchers’ findings, 32 references, intercultural teaching in the polish context, addressing and assessing critical thinking in intercultural contexts: investigating the distance learning outcomes of military leaders.

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Developing Students＇ Intercultural Competence in Foreign Language Textbooks

Research into practice: cultural and intercultural awareness, cross-cultural perspective of fl teaching and learning in the polish context, the die is cast: the continuing evolution of intercultural communication's favorite classroom exercise, internationalisation, intercultural communication and intercultural competence, building cultural competence : innovative activities and models, critical thinking: an extended definition., communicating across cultures, related papers.

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A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF INTERCULTURAL REPRESENTATION IN EFL TEXTBOOKS

2017, The 9th Thai and Southeast Asian Graduate Symposium, Forum on New Researches “Weaving Diversities in Southeast Asia; Political Social and Cultural Perspectives”, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, 18th May 2017

A number of studies have highlighted the important role of textbooks in promoting language learners' linguistic and intercultural communicative abilities. Responding to the aforementioned investigations, this research paper aims at exploring intercultural representation in the dialogues compiled from two specially chosen EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks used in Thailand and Laos. More specifically, the current work has investigated two major cultural models which play a crucial role in intercultural communication, namely Individualism and Collectivism, to see how they manifest themselves in the textbooks for Thai and Lao EFL learners. In so doing, results obtained from the analysis are capable of revealing in addition its possible link to some cultural problems, such as gender bias or inequality of power in both Thai and Lao societies. As one may recognize, EFL textbooks can be one of the great impacts in contributing to intercultural prejudices and biases that learners can, unfortunately, absorb in their learning.

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