From cultural content to intercultural language education: analysing the pedagogic affordances of Developing Chinese textbooks

This article examines how intercultural language education (ILE) is represented in selected chapters of the Developing Chinese series used at a mainland Chinese university. Drawing on qualitative document analysis of textbook passages and follow-up tasks, it analyses how materials organise opportunities for interpretation, connection, interaction, reflection, and response. Findings show that the textbooks are stronger in presenting and comparing cultural content than in enabling reflexive positioning, interactional meaning-making, and responses to uncertainty. The article argues that textbook-based ILE should be judged not only by cultural content, but also by what pedagogic work textbook tasks enable.