ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS AND CULTURAL ATTITUDES OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS: INVESTIGATING A RELATIONSHIP

The present study aimed at examining the relationship between English Textbooks and the cultural attitudes of Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners whose English proficiency was intermediate and above. To this end, Top Notch and Interchange series were selected as two of the widely used English textbooks in Iran as an EFL context. The afore- mentioned textbooks were analyzed to extract all the possible cultural issues embedded within the units. The questionnaire which was employed in this study was a test of cultural attitudes by Ashraf, Motallebzadeh and Kafi (2013) which checked the cultural attitudes of Iranian EFL learners. This test was validated by two experts in the field, also its reliability, using Cronbachʹs Alpha, was estimated to be (.870). The questionnaire was administered to 210 EFL learners of English. Afterwards the relation between these learners’ English proficiency and the extent to which their cultural attitudes had changed was also investigated. For measuring the probable relation, Chi Square test as well as cross tabulation were run for analysis of the obtained data. The results exhibited a significant relation between English textbooks and the cultural attitudes of Iranian EFL learners.