Investigating the Traces of Foreign Culture in American English Files Textbooks

Cultural instruction is considered to be a weighty fraction of modern foreign language learning and teaching since one major aim of language teaching is to increase intercultural understanding and tolerance (Corbett, 2003). Text books, as the major source for this goal, in addition to the overt cultural elements, sometimes offer sort of covert cultural components which may lead to a new un/wanted worldview among the target learning community. This study was an attempt to examine and evaluate the type and orientation of cultural issues communicated in American English Files textbooks. These books provide information about different aspects of culture such as clothing, etiquette, music, history, entertainment and so on. They were examined and analyzed according to Categories of cultural topics by Hasselgreen (2003). All the instances of cultural topics presented by Hasselgreen (2003) such as ability of coping with daily life activities, traditions, and living conditions, ability to deal with social conventions, confidence with the values, beliefs, and attitudes of foreign language users and etc. were observed in these books and their potential influences on the learners as well as the impact of some hidden cultural issues were discussed.