Samsun/'Türkiye'deki özel milletlerarası okulların ikinci kademesinde kullanılan "English for Iraq" başlıklı ders kitaplarının kültürlerarasılık açısından değerlendirilmesi

In the process of learning a language, learners should know and understand the culture of the language in order to avoid cultural shock and misunderstanding. The languages and their cultures can be learned by integrating cultural elements into language-teaching textbooks. Cultural integration in language teaching, especially in English, has recently gained greater attention and importance based on the sociocultural theories that portray learning as a social activity and the idea that culture and language are firmly attached. It has also been shown to be more critical because English is considered an international language and a lingua Franca in the twenty-first century. This study aims to evaluate the textbooks titled English For Iraq that used at the secondary stage in international schools in Turkey (Samsun) from an intercultural perspective. The methodology used in this study is a content analysis technique based on analyzing the textbooks prepared by the Iraqi Ministry of Education. The analysis is conducted by adapting two cultural theories: Patrick Moran's five dimensions of culture and Michael Byram's intercultural communicative competence ICC model. The findings and results of this study indicate that the contents of the textbook titled English For Iraq used the secondary stage, contain all the aspects of five dimensions of culture according to Moran's theory (2001), with different occurrences in presenting the materials. "English For Iraq" textbooks appeared to have less content on the models of ICC, meaning that these textbooks are characterized by an unbalanced distribution of intercultural representations in their materials, according to Byram's model of ICC. This study also examines Turkish culture in these textbooks, revealing that no data were found concerning Turkey or Turkish culture.