Aspects of Cultural Elements in Prominent English Textbooks for EFL Setting

Materials development and evaluation is a relatively young phenomenon in the field of language teaching. In the practical sense, it includes the production, evaluation and adaptation of materials. Undoubtedly, culture is much more valuable than teaching and practicing the literary masterpiece. The need to integrate culture into teaching the second language particularly teaching English in a foreign context is not a new debate and has long been highlighted in countless studies. Societal values, attitudes and cultural elements are integrated with the communicative approach to enhance the effectiveness of L2 acquisition. Conversely, textbooks are an integral part of language learning in the classrooms. Yet, it seems to be common practice that foreign language textbooks and classrooms frequently overlook the conclusions drawn in such studies and neglect the essential information about the target language culture that would help students reach a cultural understanding to accompany their linguistic knowledge. Hence, it is the intent of this paper to examine the cultural elements in four English language textbooks: Interchange, Headway, Top Notch, On Your Mark currently used in Iran in order to determine the most prominent cultural dimension portrayed.