Cultural evaluation of English for Today

Abstract

This study explores the local and international cultural imbalance of fifth grade English for Today textbook by NCTB. As a researcher to conduct the evaluation I have followed qualitative method and analyzed relevant articles of different countries across the world to find if there is any cultural gap or imbalance in the textbooks locally produced in Bangladesh. I have blended two theories one by Cortazzi and Jinn (1999) which refers to the cultural aspects of textbook evaluation such as social identity, interaction, belief and behaviour, socialization, stereotypes, national history, national geography, social and political institutes and finally an addition of mine is the use of images. Here I have added another theory referred by Mackey (2000) which states, the four senses of textbook evaluation such as aesthetic, semantic, pragmatic and socio-cultural. Thus this blending of theories made me come to a point where I have found less use of Mackey’s aesthetic, semantic, and pragmatic sense whereas the book only focused on socio-cultural sense. However, it still lacked to set equilibrium of both local and international culture of socio-cultural sense as well. Therefore, from the findings I can say that, the fifth grade English for Today textbook is culturally imbalanced. However, if the core cultural aspects can be considered along with the senses while republishing the textbooks then the balance can be assured. Therefore, the textbook will become a gem and language acquisition will become easier for the non-native learners of Bangladesh.