Intercultural Citizenship in EFL textbooks

Abstract

Nowadays, intercultural education is becoming increasingly important due to the development of international contacts and the need for intercultural dialogue. The purpose of intercultural education is to equip students with the necessary communication skills to interact with individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, enhance their linguistic and cultural knowledge, develop critical thinking and reflection, and cultivate self-criticism. Intercultural education aims to foster competencies and qualities of citizenship in an intercultural setting, preparing individuals to participate actively in society at both local and global levels, and function efficiently in a linguistically and culturally diverse environment. A review of scientific literature on the evaluation of foreign language textbooks revealed that none of the existing assessment schemes focus on the concept of intercultural citizenship. The study presents an analysis of English as a foreign language (EFL) textbook for intercultural citizenship component. The findings indicate that the EFL textbooks contain a limited amount of material on intercultural citizenship education. The analyzed textbooks reflect only a few global topics, and the exercises provided mostly focus on critical thinking development, lacking in variety