Representations of culture in four EFL textbooks for Swedish upper secondary school

Abstract: This paper presents how culture is represented in four commonly used textbooks used in English education in Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on what aspects of culture that are present in textbooks so that teacher are able to compliment the parts that may be missing from the books. Previous research on this topic has been either focused on geographical representations of cultures or on attempts at creating more aware textbooks with culture in mind. The investigation was conducted by reading the four textbooks and categorizing their content using a set of definitions to aid when placing texts or exercises in their respective categories. The categories were literature, history, geography, politics, sciences, food, holidays, values and customs. The number of texts or exercises found in each category were then counted and presented to give an overview of the amounts present in the textbooks. The results of the investigation showed that out of the nine categories literature and values had the most appearances throughout the textbooks. The reason for these categories being so prominent is contributed to the current and previous syllabi as the focus has shifted from literature being frequently used to ethical consideration being more present in exercises. One thing to take away from this project is that textbooks still has room in English education as they can contain more than just texts and exercises.