Cultural representation in EFL textbooks and teachers' perspectives about it

Culture is an inseparable part of the language phenomenon. Moreover, the integration of language and culture has become more critical with the rapid globalization of the world. Therefore, it is crucial for language teaching materials to involve various cultural elements to develop the intercultural communicative competence of language learners. The present study intends to analyze the EFL textbooks ("Relearn 9th Grade ", "10th Grade English textbooks", Sunshine English 11, and Count Me in 12") used as compulsory English materials in high schools in Türkiye between the 2019 -2024 academic years. A content analysis method was used to analyze the cultural contents in the aspect of cultural categories such as home culture, target culture, and international culture, aspects of culture such as products, practices, perspectives, and person, and cultural themes such as Big "C" and little "c". In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data from high school English teachers about their perspectives on what extent cultural elements are included in high school English textbooks. The results of the study showed that the textbooks and workbooks are insufficient in terms of cultural representation, and there is an unbalanced representation of cultural elements between grades, textbooks, and workbooks. It was also found that English teachers' perspectives confirm the unbalanced representation of cultural elements in the textbooks and workbooks. In light of the results of the study, it is suggested that these books should include more cultural elements with balance. Keywords: EFL, Cultural representation, EFL textbooks.