Cultural elements: A textbook evaluation in Indonesia

This research aims to seek cultural elements portrayed in one of the prominent Indonesian textbooks used at junior high school levels. An Indonesian textbook named Pathway to English (ELT textbook expanding circle countries) was selected and analyzed. The analysis was based on Chao (2011). The results showed the representation of all types of cultural elements in the text book; source culture, target culture, international culture, intercultural interaction, and universality across cultures were all present in this textbook. Also, the source culture was the most dominant cultural element; it implies that Indonesian culture plays a big part in the cultural content of English text books. Java and Bali provinces were dominant Indonesian cultures in the textbook. The limitation of this study is that the textbook is for first-graders of junior high school (i.e., seventh grade), thus the exposure to the target and international cultures is limited.