Identity and cultural issues

As far as we are concerned we need to analyze how materials are designed for the learners, in this case, EFL, such as textbooks, to make the lesson more meaningful for the learners. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to know the material that we are going to use as future teachers. In order to do that, we are going to analyze the E-teen8 English student book from MINEDUC, mainly because as teachers in training we must use effective materials with our future students. In this analysis, we are going to evaluate how is the E-teen textbook reality far from the Chilean students' context, referring specifically to the cultural background, how is ethnicity is seen and finally the Chilean’s reality in front of gender issues that are mentioned in the text.

First of all, it is important to narrow down and contextualize the content of the analysis, for that it is necessary to say that the textbook is taken from the Mineduc, which is the Chilean institution of education that creates free textbooks for all public schools. Mineduc provides a textbook for each subject and English is not the exception. We have chosen the E-Teen 8 English student book mainly because is a Chilean book, in that way we can evaluate how the cultural factors are immersed in the text and how that can affect to the learners.

Clearly, as future teachers, we are worried about the kind of information given by the text, because we have learned that the students are much more motivated when they feel identified with the content at the moment of studying. As we can see in Glas (2013):

“To the students, they are the most directly accessible part of the book they are using. In these terms, the potential for identification with English or English speakers might be influenced by the physical characteristics of the people who represent ownership of the language in the textbooks.”

In this respect, the author of the book seems to be aware of the importance that identification has for EFL learners. Most of the opportunities are offered for identification with Chilean, Latin American, and “universal” topics(..), for example

As we scanned in the book it was very interesting to found out that the textbook has a unit of “culture and heritage”. We strongly believe that this type of content help student to be aware of what is happening around them. Here it is seen that learners are able to experience the target language as a new device to access human background in the whole world that might be both like and alike to their own reality. These activities that we are going to show tries to explain that EFL learners have the opportunity to develop consciousness about others who belong to different ethnic groups, and understand that there is a divergence in the world.  

All of this research is mainly because we wanted to focus on the cultural factor, in the sense that even though it is a book for the Chilean context there are some aspects related to diversity that are implied in the production of the textbook. As we already show in the images above, the book includes a lot of places that are related to the different cultures which we can find in our own national identity, such as Isla de Pascua(30), Chiloe, Araucaria Park(22), and Mapuche people as well as, some of them are in latino America such as, Maya, Machu Picchu. Therefore the textbook also mentions places like Paris(39), New York (39), Bulgaria (102), Europe (56), Jordan(46), the US(29), Australia(29), Roma(27) , England, Africa (97), Canada (166).  

It is clear that most of the book mentioned places that are not near to the students' context. On the other hand, we could see that most of the units are related to exploring the world because unit 1 is about “traveling”, and unit 4 is about “heritage and culture”, so the total focus is on learning about other cultures and other places. However, it is our job as teachers to find a way to make the material more meaningful for the learners, that is why it is important to know what are the available sources that the government suggested to use because in that way we can teach and find the way to do other things during the lesson to complement what we have in the book with what we want to achieve.  

As Widdowson (1994) and Norton (1997) claimed: “English learners should enjoy learning English and in this way develop a sense of ownership of the language early on” (pg. 81). Thus this reason the material that we chose to teach to our students has to be meaningful in the sense that we have to find materials with topics in which the students can feel identify with their own interest, in that way the students will remember what was the lesson about, since this feeling of ownership also they will remember more easily since it is something they like to talk about.

“Students can discuss their own culture together with the target culture in meaningful and communicative tasks and activities. This will ensure that students are doing something with a purpose in their mind.”  (Kilickaya, 2004). That is another reason why it is important to know what cultures are mentioned in the text. In that way, it is easier to connect ideas with the student’s culture and the culture of the target language. As an example, in the text, we could find lots of cultures mentioned in many parts of the world such as Europe, The US, Asia, among others.

In connection to the cultural factors, it is said that culture is mainly constructed because of people. In other words, with no people, there is no society and without a society, there is no culture. This brief explanation is given with the idea to explain how important is to represent real people and real context in the textbooks that are used in our society. Sadly, minorities are not evidenced. During the process of analysis was held the text did not show any LGBT characteristics. It is thought that culture is more than just traditions or aspects that make us different from each country. Culture is also related to gender and how heteronormativity is exposed to the learners, terms that have been described by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick (2003: 55) as consisting of ‘those structures, institutions, relations, and actions that promote and produce heterosexuality as natural, self-evident, desirable, privileged, and necessary’.

As users of ministerial textbooks during our days at primary and secondary school, it was not shocked to realize that the analysis revealed showed that there is no reference to same-sex sexual orientation in any of the units in the text. There were not examples of a family with same-sex parents or one parent family. In the case of LGBT representation in the context of relationships or even traveling were not mentioned at all. At times is seen as an evasion of any representation of evidently LGBT people.

This picture is one of the few representations of a family that are seen in the book. A mother and a father walking in the beach with their son, but this is just a representation of an activity that people can do. Apart from this little picture, we have revised more than 80 pages of the textbook and we have not found any other representation of a family or relationship between people. This pattern enlight us in the sense that there is an avoidance to show any representation that can be misunderstood by a reader. However, Is this the way to not bother anyone who believes differently? It is seen that there is an evident LGBT invisibility through the textbook, but there is also invisibility by itself.

As we have discussed in class, as future teachers we just have to observe the cultural and ethnical differences in our country, and the continuous, disproportionate and poor educational results associated to those topics to understand the reason why we should examine Chilean textbooks in order to not let behind the diverse range of people and gaps in our educational system.  Luckily there are some topics that are now covered in the textbooks but there is a lot of work to do, for intance the fact of LGBT invisibility in the current textbooks. We should follow new aims for students, they need to learn from an early age how wide and how diverse is their world, in order to not base their learning on stereotypes.