INDONESIAN CULTURE REPRESENTATION IN “PATHWAY TO

ENGLISH” AN ENGLISH STUDENT TEXTBOOK FOR TENTH GRADE

UNDER THE 2013 INDONESIAN CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKS
(A Content Analysis of Cultural Context in Erlangga’s Textbook)

Aris Nur Azhar

Galuh University, Ciamis, Indonesia
Email: aris.nur.azhar@gmail.com

Dadan Jauhara, M.Pd Andi Rustandi, M.Pd

Lecturer of English Language Lecturer of English Language
Education Department Education Department
Galuh University, Ciamis, Indonesia Galuh University, Ciamis, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research is aim to investigating on how Indonesian culture that

represented in the textbook which under the 2013 curriculum
framework. This research is content analysis in nature. The data for
this research are collected from the cultural-word utterances in the
English textbook for tenth grade of Senior High School entitled
“Pathway to English” published by Erlangga publisher. To reveal on
how Indonesia culture represented in the textbook, the writer use
Byram’s criteria of culture to divide the culture references into 8
different categories and 43 subcategories (Byram, 1993). The
research finds that the social identity category was predominant in
this textbook. The investigation was found that 22.9% cultural
content belong to Social identity category; 18.87% Stereotype and
national identity category; 17.35% belong to Belief and behaviour
category; 16,27% belong to Socialization and lifecycle category;
11.2% belong to National geography category; 6.72% cultural
content belong to Socio-political category; 6.29% belong to National
history category; and 0.22% cultural content belong to Social
interaction category. Nevertheless, the Indonesian culture represented
in the textbook is not thoroughly explored. Based on the findings,
firstly it is recommended that the distribution of culture categories
should be more balanced in the textbook, and secondly, the Byram’s
criteria of culture has to be explored more as it is new subject in
Indonesia. Lastly, the teacher should more implant culture awareness
in their teaching activity as it is ordered by government policy related
to the 2013 curriculum.

Keyword: Indonesian culture, textbook, the 2013 curriculum,

content analysis.
INTRODUCTION

In teaching and learning language, culture is also one of the important

parts that cannot separable from language itself. (Kramch, 1993; Byram, 1993;

Brown, 2001; and Magogwe 2009). Therefore, learning new language means that

it is also inevitable involve teaching a new culture. Thus, through teaching and

introducing the language, language learners also learns about the culture. In EFL

context, textbooks are generally considered to be the major source of the teaching

materials, therefore they play an important role in disseminating cultures or

cultural elements in the teaching and learning process.

Since the implementation of 2013 curriculum, one of requirements of a

good textbook is the comprehensiveness of the content based on the standard

competency as indicate by the basic competences covered in the book criteria

based on BSNP (2007). Which also explicitly mentions the requirements for the

content appropriateness is the development of the “unity in diversity” perspective.

Therefore, it is recommended that EFL textbook should reflect appreciation and

respect upon multi-cultures and community plurality, which include various

cultural values and local, national, and global wisdoms.

The previous study (Phillipson, 1992; Prodromou, 1992; Kramch, 1993; 1

Modiano, 2001; Modiano, 2005; & Taki, 2008) has shown that ELT textbooks

contain representations of different cultures and society from all over the world

(e.g. source culture, target culture, and international target). In contrast, this study

is aimed to use qualitative content analysis to better understanding and explaining

Indonesia cultural content as the source culture in the new curriculum textbook.
Therefore, the writer’s aim of this research is to find out about the place of local

culture or local culture presentation on textbooks entitled Pathways English for

tenth grade of high school.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The definition of culture is refined as people are being developed, as

Gollnick and Chinn, (1994) stated as cited in Cortazi and Jin (1999) that the term

of culture has been used to refer to groups of people who were more developed in

their way of life and less primitive than the tribal people in many parts of the

world. Culture in this sense includes the major accomplishments of a given

civilization such as art, music, literature, geography, folklore, sociology, political

system, and history. Moreover, Cortazzi and Jin (1999) also have classified the

types of culture into three types: source culture, target culture, and international

target culture. The first type is source culture, which refers to the learners’ own

culture. The next type is target culture that refers to the culture country where the

language being learned is used as a first language. The last type is international

target culture, which mirrors the culture that does not belong to the source or the

target culture; it is the variety of culture around the world, where the target

language is spoken as an international language.

According to McDonough, et al (2013, p. 61-77) definition of textbook is

one of the main tool or instrument in teaching and learning process as its function

to help giving directions and learning material or exercise for student and guide to

the teacher as its main instructor in adapting his or her teaching in the class.
 In line with above, the writer views Richards and Richard (2011) whom

also remark about textbook also can be defines as books which made and

published for educational purpose or even any book used as a help tool in the

classroom e.g. a novel. In addition, the term textbook may also be linked to an

even broader and more commonly-used term teaching media, which includes

other teaching material as well e.g. CDs, internet and videos. On the other hand,

Karvonen (1995, p. 12) state the most important basic function of a school

textbook is to transmit information. Furthermore, both Kalmus (2004, p. 1) and

Lähdesmäki (2009, p. 271) point out that school textbooks are also considered

important instruments for transmitting values, skills and even attitudes to the

younger generation.

In designing a textbook, there are some criteria which must be fulfilled to

be qualified as teaching and learning resource and to meet the standard of teaching

and learning process to use in classroom. In line with this idea, Tomlinson (2003,

p. 16) contends that the textbook should follow some measurement of procedure.

He stated (1) that the textbook must appeal of the materials that will be delivered,

(2) Moreover, the content itself must have credibility to learners.

Therefore, in evaluating culture inside textbook, Byram (1993) was

proposed a checklist to categorize the cultural content inside material on language

teaching context, especially in the textbook as the main instrument in language

teaching. The checklist consists of 8 categories: social identity, social interaction,

belief and behaviour, social and political institution, socialization and the life

cycle, national history, national geography, and stereotypes and national identity.
 It can be concluded that this study intended to answer the aim of this study

of how Indonesian culture representation inside the textbook using Byrams’

criteria of culture.

METHODOLOGY

The nature of this study is a qualitative approach. Therefore, This study

employed a descriptive study as its method. Furthermore, in analyze the data

within, Byrams’ criteria of culture (1993) was engaged since this study analyze

the data regarding the text, sentences, words, and utterances of Indonesian culture.

Byrams’ criteria of culture was thought to be the most appropriate framework in

this study since Lappailainen (2011) recommended that Byrams’ criteria of

culture is generally a better way of understanding culture representation inside the

textbook.

In conducting the analysis, the data were analyzed from the Indonesian

culture utterances, references (i.e. words, sentence and text) in “Pathway to

English” an EFL Textbook under the 2013 Curriculum. The step of the analysis

was derived from Neuendorf (2002) framework that involved the steps of content

analysis, that mentions as observing, coding scheme, sampling, data mining,

coding, categorizing, tabulating, evaluating, lastly, analyzing and reporting.

In this research, the texts were selected from textbooks: Pathway To

English. From the the textbooks, the analysis was specified into the text passages

presented in each unit. The Pathway to English textbook comprises eleven units.

Each unit consists seven sections: section one to four are related to four language

skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and each section is focused on
one skill except section four which integrates writing with grammar; section five

is Sound It Out: This section are for practices learning pronunciation of English

words; section six is Language for Aesthetic which is a section for student to learn

English literature; and last section is Self-Reflection which is provided for the

students so that they can reflect on what have been learned and what they are

expected to be able to do after learning the unit.

The data analysis consists of four stages. First, to establish the presence of

the cultural items, the text passages from the textbook are first divided into three

types of culture: source culture, target culture, and international target

culture (Byram, 1993; Cortazzi & Jin, 1999) in order to see which culture is

prominently presented in the textbooks. The source culture here refers to

Indonesian culture; target culture refers to the culture where English is the first

language or “the inner circle country” which are UK, USA, Canada, Australia,

and New Zealand; and international target culture refers to the culture of the

country that does not belong to the source culture or target culture. However, later

this study focuses only in source culture items (i.e. Indonesian culture) as to

answered the research question.

Second, in order to reveal how the cultural content was represented in the

text passages; the source culture was analyzed by using the Byram’s (1993)

checklist as the research instrument to categorized the cultural content. The

checklist consists of 8 categories: cultural identity and social group, social

interaction, belief and behaviour, social and political institution, socialization and

the life cycle, stereotypes and national identity, national history, and national
geography. Third, interpretations are built to measure how the cultural content is

represented in all the cultural words from the textbooks. This step using

qualitative approaches which to describe the data that collected.

Finally, the data was concluded by percentage the sum of particular types

of Byrams’ criteria of culture, which was found in the textbook. This process

elaborated the use of cultural word types which were frequently occurred in this

textbook. Later on, this data will be presented qualitatively to answer this studt

research question.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The result of the analysis above reveals that Pathway to English textbook

covers Indonesian culture from Byram’s criteria of culture. However, the

occurrences of each of the categorys within are not equally shown in each unit.

The following table are the result of analysis which later calculated using the

formula of the percentage that adapted from Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, p. 136):

Table 1. The Occurrences of Byram’s Critera of Culture category in “Pathway to

English” textbook
Byram Criteria of Culture
Unit Social Social Belief and
Socio-
political
Socialiasation National National
Stereotype
and National
Total
Identity Interaction Behaviour and Life-cycle History Geography
Institutions Identity

1 5 - 4 3 5 5 2 8 32
2 10 - 8 3 9 1 6 12 49
3 3 - 10 - 1 - - 3 17
4 7 - 4 3 1 2 - 10 27
5 - - 2 - 6 - - 2 8
6 12 - 8 6 1 2 3 4 36
7 14 - 7 2 14 2 21 6 66
8 12 - 2 1 10 4 11 4 44
9 13 - 9 1 10 2 5 13 53
10 24 - 19 5 11 9 2 17 87
11 8 1 7 7 7 2 2 7 41
Total 106 1 80 31 75 29 52 87 461
% 22,99% 0.22% 17,35% 6.72% 16.27% 6.29% 11.29% 18.87% 100%
Based on table 4.9, the writer was found that the highest utterance of Byram’s

criteria of culture category was falls into social identity which 22.99 % overall in

number of occurrences that later following by stereotype and national identity

with 18.87%, belief and behaviour with 17.35%, socialization and life-cycle with

16.27%, national geography with 11,29%, socio-political institutions with 6,72%,

national history with 6,29%, and the least number of occurrence was found in

social interaction with 0,22%.

Finding from this study closely mirror previous study. Like Lappalainen

(2011) that studied the representation of American culture in EFL textbooks. In

addition, the writer found that the textbook was mostly shown stereotypes and

national identity in this textbook. Furthermore, it was relevant with the theory

from Byram (1993, p. 36-38) about categories of culture as have been elaborated

in the previous description and will be represented by the figure 1 below.

 Criteria of Culture
18,87%

22,99% 17,35%Social Identity

Stereotype & National identity

Belief & behaviour

0,22%
Socialisation & lifescycle

National geography

6,29% Socio-political institutions

National history
6,72% 16,27%
11,29% Social interaction

Figure 1. Frequency of Indonesian culture occurrences based on Byrams’

Criteria of culture

From the pie chart above, this study shows that the Indonesian cultural

content in Pathway to English approximately constitutes all units with different

percentage each unit covered. Stereotype and national identity occupy 21,8%, as

the highest categories of culture and Social Interaction occupy 0,2% as the lowest

utterance of culture, this was recommended in previous literature (Phillipson,

1992; Prodromou, 1992; Kramch, 1993; Modiano, 2001; Gary, 2002; Modiano,

2005; & Taki, 2008). This regional ELT textbook has overcome the problem of

marginalization of Periphery cultures (Indonesia) quantitatively. Data analysis

showed that there are some statistical differences between each category.

Furthermore, the distribution of words under the analysis categories looks

similar. Category #8, stereotypes and national identity (see table 4.9), occupies the
first position and Category #1 social identity, occupies the second position, or

category #4 social and political institutions, occupies the third position and

Category#5 socialisation and lifecycle that occupies the fourth position. However,

Category #2 social interaction category was mainly occurred once hence placed as

the last position. However, based on the result in figure 4.2 indicate that the

presentation of Indonesia culture in each category is quantitatively percentages

unbalanced.

CONCLUSION

The aim of this study was to investigate the existence of Indonesia cultural

content in an English textbook used by tenth grade of Senior High School. Having

discussed and analyzed the previous chapter, in this section the researcher

delivered the conclusions of the research. The findings exposed the important

point that culture applied on English teaching material. The conclusions were

related to the research questions on the Indonesian culture representation in

Pathway to English textbook an EFL textbook for tenth grade under the 2013

Indonesia curriculum. Furthermore, the result of this study was exposed Indonesia

value with directly mentioned. Thus it can be concluded that the most category of

culture occurred in this textbook was social identity category that relevant with

the criteria of category of culture from Byram (1993, p. 36-38). The writer found

the social identity as most dominant in which elaborate to shows identity of

general people in Indonesia (Salam, 2013). This result is in line with Collier

(1998, p. 134) that noted “identities are multiple, overlapping, and contextually

constituted and negotiated”. In other words, when students learn a foreign

language, their new identities are shaped in part by what they read in the

textbooks at schools. Therefore, this EFL textbook that shows social identity as

the most frequent occurrences criteria of culture could encourage students to seek

and maintain their own cultural identities. It may not only encourage the

development of identity, but also encourage the awareness of others’ identities

and an element of stabilization in a world of rapid change” (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999).

Therefore, the study concludes with the following recommendation, that in order

of understand the culture better, the culture should be integrate in teaching-

learning process and teaching material. Moreover, there are two major

implications that could be the issues to be considered. The first is the cultures

encourage the students to think critically. The second is the cultures are able to

increase student awareness towards culture differentiated between the contexts.

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