Interculturality in an English textbook: A critical teaching alternative

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present some possibilities on the use of an Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (ICLT) model to teach part of a unit of the textbook English File – third edition, pre-intermediate - under a critical intercultural perspective (CANDAU, 2020; PARDO, 2018; WALSH, 2009). As far as the teaching model is concerned, this study considers Tran and Duong’s (2018) suggestion of ICLT in order to promote, what we call, Critical Intercultural Performativity, by using the textbook and authentic materials. This paper is organized according to the following sections: 1) a reflection on cultural representations in English textbooks; 2) a discussion of the targeted part from the chosen unit under a critical intercultural perspective (PARDO, 2018); 3) the suggestion of an ICLT model to approach the part of this unit considering critical interculturality. The study concluded that cultural representations in the targeted unit of the textbook New English File (NEF) mostly depicted hegemonized knowledge – grounded in the common US-Europe west-centered duality – and it suggests a critical version of Tran and Duong’s (2018) ICLT model to use the textbook according to the realities of Brazilian learners.