Analysing speakout upper-intermediate second edition from an intercultural point of view

Year 2020, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 71 - 95, 01.06.2020

Juan Carlos Araujo Portugal

Abstract

As everybody acknowledges, cultural content is an essential element in language teaching nowadays. However, many teachers complain that they find it quite difficult to promote intercultural competence, among other reasons, because the coursebooks that they use with their students do not include appropriate cultural content and activities. This is why this paper attempts to analyse a specific coursebook as regards its cultural content, so as to establish whether any shortcomings in this respect are identified. If any shortcomings are revealed, it will be tried to remedy them by suggesting appropriate activities that can be used to promote intercultural competence among the students that use the coursebook. Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, first of all this paper analyses the textbook SpeakOut Upper-intermediate, second edition from an intercultural point of view to check to what extent it meets Sercu’s (1995) criteria in this sense. Afterwards, a number of tasks that could be carried out to improve and exploit this cultural component are presented. These activities may be used for this purpose by those teachers using this coursebook or those who might decide to use it in the future. It may also serve as the basis to complement any coursebook that they are using with their students.

Keywords

acquisition, analysis, coursebook, intercultural communicative competence

References

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