Cultural contents analysis in EFL coursebooks for the 4th and 5th grade of elementary school

Culture and language are closely linked, as language changes along with the culture and strongly defines and shapes each culture at the same time. Therefore, it is important not to ignore this connection while teaching a foreign language, since incorporating cultural content into the lessons helps the student to develop the communicative competence successfully. The textbook is the most important and widespread teaching tool in Slovenia and at least partially guides teachers in their choice of the cultural content. The textbook must contain a balanced amount of cultural content of the target and native culture of the students, who, by comparing their own culture with that of the target culture, learn and build cultural identity and intercultural awareness while learning a foreign language. Cultural content must be diverse and contain both straightforward themes and less visible content, such as patterns of behavior, values, and beliefs. In addition, it should allow students to develop all four language skills while learning cultural content. The results of the quantitative survey, which included 12 validated textbooks for teaching English as a foreign language for the 4th (6 textbooks) and the 5th grade (6 textbooks), showed that the highest quantity of cultural content appeared in the textbook Reach for the stars 5 and the lowest in the textbooks Hi There! 4 and Super Minds 1. There is less cultural content in grade 4 textbooks than in textbooks for the fifth grade. Most of the cultural content contained in the validated textbooks for teaching English in the 4th and the 5th grade of the elementary school in Slovenia is from the big C culture. The fewest amount of cultural content in textbooks is from the topics of culture in general. The biggest proportion of tasks in the validated textbooks for English as a foreign language for grades 4 and 5 of the elementary school in Slovenia is devoted to improving reading and listening skills. The smallest proportion of tasks is devoted to developing writing skills. The results of the research showed that the topics that appear most frequently in English textbooks in grades 4 and 5 are from target culture and that the content which is represented the least is the content from the other cultures. Target culture is most often presented through the culture of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the biggest number of different cultures occurring in a single textbook is 22. Most of the topics of the culture in general are about cultural identity; most of the cultural content from big C culture is from topics geography/history/politics and clothing/fashion/food/home while the level of formality/directness/honesty/openness are the most frequent topics from the small c culture