Investigating Intercultural Elements in English

Intercultural communicative competence is defined to be at the heart of foreign language education more than communicative competence nowadays. Performing competently in intercultural communication requires certain dimensions in language education. One of them is integration of intercultural and target culture specific elements in coursebooks. In order to build up a picture of frequently used intercultural and target culture specific items in coursebooks, this study analyzes the contents of ‘My English 5, Unique 6, Spring 7 and Four Seasons English 8 ’ for English language instruction in Turkish primary schools. Key findings from the data highlight that the target culture specific items in conversations and visuals outweigh the intercultural ones. Besides, intercultural items are usually found in certain cultures like Japanese, French and German. It is concluded that although local coursebooks have improved in inclusion of cultural items it highly depends on teachers to adapt those items and use them communicatively and creatively