CULTURAL REPRESENTATION IN MOROCCAN EFL TEXTBOOKS: A QUANTITATIVE DOCUMENT ANALYSIS

Abstract

The study aims to investigate cultural representation in EFL textbooks, exploring its major role in fostering intercultural competence in the educational context. It examines the portrayal of Moroccan, American-British, and global cultures in second-year baccalaureate textbooks, assessing how these cultural elements promote intercultural competence among Moroccan learners. Employing a quantitative document analysis, the paper measures both textual and visual representations across the thematic units of selected textbooks. Textual content includes reading passages, informational texts, narratives, examples, dialogues, activities, and tasks. Visual content, on the other hand, encompasses images, graphs, diagrams, illustrations, and maps. The analysis of the textual content reveals that Ticket 2 English adopts a more balanced approach, incorporating Moroccan, American-British, and World cultures. The results related to the visual content demonstrate that Gateway to English 2 tends to include more pictorial and graphical representations of the three cultural categories. Despite the presence of different cultural references, the findings show that the selected textbooks fail to integrate cultural content effectively to develop students’ intercultural competence. Based on these results, the paper recommends the implementation of context-rich textual and visual cultural representations so as to enhance Moroccan students’ communicative competencies in an increasingly globalized world.