Locally-developed vs. Global Textbooks: An Evaluation of Cultural Content in Textbooks Used in ELT in Malaysia

Adopting the Common European Framework Reference in ELT led the Malaysian Ministry of Education to replace locally developed textbooks with imported (global) coursebooks. Given the Malaysian English curriculum emphasis on learners’ intercultural skills, the question that arises is whether imported coursebooks meet local learners’ needs. The current study addresses this based on an analysis of the cultural content in English Form 1, a locally developed textbook, and Pulse 2, an imported coursebook. The study employed Byram’s Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) framework to capture intercultural content and measured the spectrum of cultures (source, target and other cultures) in each book. The intercultural content and the cultural spectrum in the local textbook are found to be wider and more in keeping with ICC objectives than the imported book. Replacing a local textbook with an imported coursebook, therefore, may not necessarily be in the best interest of the country’s English language agenda.