Developing Intercultural Competence with Critical Literacy: An Analysis of Cultural Perspectives in 8th Grade EFL Textbooks

Abstract

The current master’s thesis in Education is intended for the field of English didactics. The motivation behind the current study is to explore how EFL textbooks can be utilized to improve students’ awareness and understanding of how positioning and power work in texts. The study aims to investigate how a critical literacy approach might help students develop intercultural competence through an understanding of positioning and power in textbooks. The thesis also explores how different operations of power evident in chapters on India in two Norwegian EFL textbooks for the 8th grade contribute to or contradict aims related to intercultural learning. The methodology applied to conduct the study is a qualitative content analysis and the critical literacy approach “Thompson’s table of how power works in texts” is used as the framework for the analysis. The current study demonstrates how Thompson’s table may contribute to developing the students’ intercultural competence in accordance with the new Norwegian national curriculum LK20. The findings from the current study reveal that the operations of power evident in the examined textbooks to a large extent contradict the aims related to the development of intercultural competence. These indications are significant as the importance of developing students’ intercultural competence is clearly stated in the new LK20 curriculum.