Manifestation of Cultural Components of Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles of English Language in EFL Textbooks: A Study of 'Crescent English Course' for Yemen

Abstract

This paper investigates the inclusion of cultural elements of Inner Circle, Outer Circle and Expanding Circle of English, (Kachru, 1992 a) in Crescent English Course Series of ELT in Yemen or English Course for Yemen. The method of content analysis, based on the two coding schemes: The Nine Criteria of Culture proposed by Byram and Morgan (1994) and the Three Circles of English Speaking Countries classified by Kachru (1992 a), was adopted to codify and analyse the cultural content of these textbooks under investigation. All of the textbooks of the series are subject matter of this study. The number of texts under scrutiny are 505 paragraphs from both Primary and Secondary series of the textbooks, whereas the number of pictures and illustrations are 560 for both as well. The results show that this series of textbooks has promoted these types of cultures with some discrepancy slightly focusing on the Outer/Expanding Circles cultural components more than Inner Circle cultural components. In other words, there is some sort of mild inclination towards the Outer/Expanding Circle culture with many examples both as paragraphs and illustrations revealed in these six textbooks of the English Course for Yemen series. English-speaking countries, that is the Inner Circle culture is less favoured in the nine criteria of investigation of the study, but still represented in a greater proportion within these six textbooks under investigation.