Cultural Appropriateness in Materials

The fit between the cultural content of ELT materials and the values, expectations, and lived realities of the learners using them. Appropriateness is not a single property — it spans what gets represented, how, and what learners are asked to do with it.

Three layers

A useful split runs across surface, representational, and pedagogic layers. The surface layer covers names, settings, food, dress, and visible practices: the obvious stuff that catches a reader's eye. The representational layer concerns who appears as protagonist, whose problems frame the topics, and whose voices speak: the hidden curriculum embedded in the choice of texts and characters. The pedagogic layer is the cultural script around the activities themselves: whether learners are expected to challenge a teacher's claim, work in pairs versus listen silently, or share personal information in class.

The hidden curriculum

Karen Risager's Language and Culture Pedagogy (Multilingual Matters, 2007) and Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity (Multilingual Matters, 2006) argue that ELT materials carry an implicit cultural pedagogy whether their authors intend one or not. The repeated absence of certain people, places, and topics communicates as loudly as the presence of others. John Gray's analysis in The Construction of English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) shows how global coursebooks present a sanitised consumerist English-speaking world — see PARSNIP for the editorial filter that produces it.

Intercultural sensitivity

Appropriateness goes beyond avoiding offence. Materials that engage learners with their own culture as well as the target culture build the comparative awareness that drives intercultural communicative competence — the ability to negotiate meaning across cultural framings rather than within one. Stripping all cultural friction from materials in the name of inoffensiveness leaves nothing for learners to compare.

Evaluation criteria

Practical evaluation runs three checks. Representational balance: are the people, places, and topics broad enough to give learners a recognisable mirror and a useful window? Pedagogic fit: do the activity types match what learners can do without losing face? Sensitivity: are filtered topics filtered for genuine local reasons or only for marketing reasons? Adaptation then targets the gaps.

References

• Risager, K. (2006). Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity. Multilingual Matters.
• Risager, K. (2007). Language and Culture Pedagogy: From a National to a Transnational Paradigm. Multilingual Matters.
• Gray, J. (2010). The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Global Coursebook. Palgrave Macmillan.