The cultural content and intercultural communicative competence in the global and local textbooks used in Indonesian EFL classes

A number of studies on the cultural content represented in local or global textbooks have increasingly been investigated. However, it is scanty research comparing local and global textbooks. This study aims to examine two textbooks determined by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, a global textbook entitled English in Mind for schools implementing a new curriculum called Merdeka curriculum and a local textbook, When English Rings a Bell, for schools that have not applied it. The study employed content analysis as a research design. The results show that the global textbook provides more on target culture, but the local textbook highly emphasizes source culture and neglects international cultures. In addition, the global textbook concerns social and environmental themes, while the local textbook focuses more on religion/humanities/art and personal theme. Further, the global textbook does not accommodate adequate intercultural communicative competence, which was absent in the local textbook. The imbalanced cultural representations in those textbooks affect students’ intercultural competence. The study suggests the practical implications of providing students with sufficient references to the target, source, and international cultures to promote their intercultural competence.


Introduction
Today's status of English is English as an International Language (EIL) since a high number of non-native speakers communicate using English.More than eighty percent of non-native speakers interact in the world using it (Sharifian, 2013).In other words, it is spoken not only by native speakers in Englishspeaking countries but also speakers around the world with wide various cultures (Alptekin, 2002;Pashmforoosh & Babaii, 2015;Yamanaka, 2006).In the real life, English is used by native and non-native speakers around the world for professional, academic, and commercial purposes; for instance, 75% of email, 80% of computer data, and 85% of information stored are in English (Alptekin, 2002).
English as International Language or lingua franca entails effective communication to avoid miscommunication since the speakers have different cultures.Effective communication does not emphasize communicative competence but also cultural competence (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015), as language and culture are inseparable (Alptekin, 1993;Amerian & Tajabadi, 2020).Learning the language means learning the culture (Shreeb, 2017).Thus, teaching a foreign language by integrating the cultural content encompassing the local and international context setting is essential.Silvia (2015) urges that the materials should provide the target culture and other cultures (local culture and international culture).The materials and activities should contain the interactions between native and non-native speakers and non-native and non-native speakers (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015).They should reflect the culture of different countries (Pashmforoosh & Babaii, 2015) and cultural conceptualizations related to varieties of English (Sharifian, 2013).
A number of studies on the cultural content represented in locally developed textbooks for various levels have increasingly been investigated.Setyono and Widodo (2019) explore the multicultural values in the senior high school English Journal on English as a Foreign Language,13(1), 242-264 p-ISSN 2088242-264 p-ISSN -1657;;e-ISSN 2502-6615 textbook published by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture for twelfth graders using critical discourse analysis.Dinh and Sharifian (2017) also depict the cultural conceptualizations of the Lunar New Year in Vietnamese high school textbooks for eleventh graders employing cultural linguistics.Further, other studies in Asia countries setting are undertaken, such as the analysis of textbooks for grades 4 to 8 in Turkey (Kirkgöz & Aǧçam, 2011), primary students in Iraq (Shreeb, 2017), senior high school students in China (Aliakbari & Jamalvandi, 2013), and senior and junior high school students in Japan (Yamanaka, 2006).Besides, Weninger and Kiss (2013) analyzed the EFL textbooks developed by non-native speakers in Hungary through semiotic analysis.
The cultural content in global or international English textbooks is also a prominent area of research.Some scholars discovered the cultural content in the global textbooks for different levels.Ahmed and Narcy-combes (2011) analyzed the textbooks written by foreign authors based on the student's culture (C1) and target culture (C2).Seventh and eighth graders used textbooks in Pakistan.In a similar context, Shah et al. (2014) investigated the global textbooks authored by foreigners for grades 5 to 8 in Pakistan by addressing the sociological aspect.Awayed-Bishara (2015) explored English textbooks for high school students in Israeli based on cultural content represented in the names, pronouns, passive or active voice, and narratives.In the Colombia context, Rodríguez (2015) scrutinized textbooks used by college students in universities in Bogotá based on the deep (invisible aspects) and surface culture (e.g., holidays, food, geographical sites).The global English textbook for Taiwanese college students at Minghsin University of Science and Technology was also examined by Chao (2011) based on five dimensions of culture (product, practice, perspective, communities, and person) and cultural categories (source, target, and international culture).Almost similar to Chao (2011), Yuen (2011) analyzed two global English language textbooks for the senior high school level, referring to four cultural aspects: practice, perspective, product, and person.Moreover, Shin et al. (2011) undertook an investigation on global ELT textbooks for some Asian countries based on cultural aspects (inner, outer or expanding, and other circles) and cultural presentation level (knowledge and communication-oriented) The aforementioned studies show that scanty investigation on the comparison of locally and globally developed textbooks.Only a few scholars delved into it.Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2015) and Moghaddam and Tirnaz (2023) compared global and local textbooks in the Iran context; nevertheless, the theoretical frameworks were different.The former focused on the source, target, and international culture, while the latter employed the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) framework.In a similar vein, Rahim and Daghigh (2020) adopted ICC theoretical framework and cultural spectrum (international, source, and target culture) to compare local and global textbooks in the Malaysian context.The previous studies have not provided comprehensive cultural depictions in terms of culture types (source, target, and international culture), culture themes (social, religion/humanities/arts, personal, politics and institution, and environmental), and intercultural communicative competence.Thus, it is imperative to set out research on cultural content in the English textbooks written by local and foreign authors by addressing the culture types, culture theme, and ICC framework.Further, some public and private junior high schools, particularly grade seven, have recently implemented the Merdeka curriculum (a new curriculum determined by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture), using international textbooks written by foreign authors by replacing the English textbook written by the local authors.On the other hand, some public schools still use the local English textbook since they have not implemented that curriculum.It is also urgent to investigate whether the global and local textbooks contain cultural content and intercultural communicative competence as a consideration in textbook selection as teaching and learning material.Therefore, this study aims to explore the cultural content and intercultural communicative competence by addressing the following research questions: (1) What type of culture is represented in the local and global English textbooks?(2) What culture theme is represented in the local and global English textbooks?(3) To what extent do the local and global English textbooks support the students' intercultural communicative competence?

Theoretical framework
Culture types Cortazzi and Jin (1999) explain cultural representation into the source, target, and international cultures.Source culture or first language culture emphasizes students' own culture.Target culture concerns the culture of the English native speakers' countries (culture of the inner circle), whereas international culture refers to the various cultures around the globe.Additionally, Pashmforoosh and Babaii (2015) and Tajeddin and Pakzadian (2020)  a second language, such as South Africa, Singapore, India, Nigeria, and the Philippines.The expanding circle is the countries that use English as an international language, such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Greece, Iran, European countries, etc.In real life, the majority of speakers are from outer and expanding circle countries.The culture types are shown in Table 1.

Skills of interpreting and relating
Capability in interpreting and relating the event or documents from the other culture and one's own

Skills of discovery and interaction
The capability to explain the interlocutor's concepts and values to other phenomena; recognize the relationships between other cultures and one's; apply the knowledge, skills, and attitude to mediate between one's own culture and other culture

Critical cultural awareness
The capability to evaluate perspectives, practices, and products in other cultures and one's own Culture themes Pfister and Borzelli (1977) categorize the culture into social, religion/humanities/arts, personal, politics and institution, and environmental themes (Table 1).The social theme includes leisure, attitude, nationality, work, and social class, and the religion/humanities/arts comprise expressions, writing, music, sacred places, fables, and history.The next category is a personal theme encompassing shopping, family, and housing, while politics and institutions involve education, government, equity, and law.The last is the environmental theme incorporating geography, climate, urban and rural area, and natural resources.

Intercultural communicative competence
Scholars define intercultural communicative competence differently; however, Byram (1997) depicts it more comprehensively (Table 1).He explains that it is the ability to understand one's culture and other cultures.His framework consists of knowledge, attitude, skills, and critical cultural awareness.Attitude refers to the willingness to believe other cultures and one's own culture and the interest to discover other perspectives in one's own culture and other cultures (curiosity and openness).Knowledge concerns products, practices, or social groups in other cultures and one's own cultures.Skills of interpreting and relating constructs are the capability to interpret and relate the event or documents from the other culture and one's own.Skills of discovery and interaction construct address the capability to explain the interlocutor's concepts and values to other phenomena; recognize the relationships between other cultures and one's one; and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitude to mediate between one's own culture and other culture.Critical cultural awareness construct is the capability to evaluate perspectives, practices, and products in other cultures and one's own.

Textbook corpus
The present study investigated the cultural content in local and global textbooks in Indonesia and explored whether it supported the students' intercultural competence or not.The locally developed textbook, When English Rings a Bell (Khatimah et al., 2014)

Data analysis
This present study was conducted using content analysis (Shah et al., 2014).The content analysis was undertaken to determine the text's pattern, meaning, or relationship and was suitable for identifying any teaching material (Shah et al., 2014).The data of this study were the image, text, image, and text representing culture types, culture themes, and intercultural communicative competence.
The study focused on the image, text, image, and text as a unit analysis by referring to Cortazzi and Jin's (1999) framework explaining source culture, target culture, and international culture, Pfister and Borzelli's framework (1977) classifying the culture into social, religion/humanities/arts, personal, politics and institution, and environmental themes, and Byram's framework (1997) consists of knowledge, attitude, skills and critical cultural awareness.Gay et al. (2012) describe some strategies to build trustworthiness, such as prolonging participation, carrying out member checking, providing a detailed descriptive research setting or data collection methods, making the audit trail, using peer review, or conducting the triangulation.The present study provided a detailed description of the research context.Firstly, table analysis was made using Microsoft Excel.It consisted of number, unit, theme, image, text, image and text, culture types (source, target, and international culture), culture theme (social, religion/humanities/arts, personal, politics and institution, and environmental themes), intercultural communicative competence (knowledge, attitude, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness).Secondly, the images, texts, images, and texts from When English Rings a Bell and English in Mind were inputted into the table analysis.Those data are categorized and coded thematically into culture types (source, target, and international culture), culture themes (social, religion/humanities/arts, personal, politics and institution, and environmental themes), and intercultural communicative competence (knowledge, attitude, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness) by two raters.When they disagreed in analyzing the data, they got a consensus by revisiting the data (Angeli et al., 2003;Christopher et al., 2004).The next phase was counting the frequency of occurrence and percentage.The last was involving an expert to check the data's credibility.

Types of cultures
Figure 1 presents the types of cultures of global and local textbooks.English in Mind depicted an almost equal number of the target and international cultures, with 67 cases (47%) and 60 cases (42%), respectively.The target culture referring to inner-circle countries or the culture of the English native speakers' countries could be seen in some examples.One of them was in unit 1 (page 15) which the passage described Joana's personal life.She is fourteen years old and from New York as Well admires Alicia Keys as her heroine.The other example was in unit 5 (page 40), where the students were asked to describe famous persons from English-speaking countries such as Beyonce (an American artist), Josh Jarnett (a well-known American actor), Kate Winslet (an actress from England), and Robert Pattinson (An actor from London).

Figure 1 Culture content of the global and local textbooks
In addition, English in Mind provides international culture highlighting the various cultures around the globe for some instances.Unit 13 page 95 indicated the international culture involving the two cultures, Korea and America.The passage describes a film about the war in Korea.Two soldiers were from America and Korea.The American soldier was named Tom Granger, and the Korean soldier was Mun-hee Pak. Park and her daughter, Jin, successfully saved Tom Granger because she was a nurse.They had a language barrier because each of them did not understand the language.Park and Jin could not communicate using English, while Tom could not speak Korean.Tom learned Korean with Jin, and finally, he mastered the Korean language (Figure 3).

Figure 2 Examples of the target culture in the global textbook
Source: English in Mind (Puchta & Stranks, 2010) Figure 3 An instance of international culture in the global textbook .Source: English in Mind (Puchta & Stranks, 2010) In contrast, English in Mind had yet to give attention to source culture, which was only 17 cases (17%).The example of source culture was captured in a passage (unit 7, page 52) narrating a senior high school student named Mawar who lived in the village of Kertajaya, West Java, Indonesia, which was quite far.She never went to her real school because of some reason.Her school was not near, so she was not able to reach it by walking every day.The other reason was it always rained and had a storm.Her village had a temporal school with an old building, and she went there.She and her family did have a TV.The passage highlighted Indonesian culture.Additionally, in unit 4 (page 32), there was an exercise that asked the students to ask questions about their own town or city.Unit 9 (page 71) encouraged the students to email Jave and explain their popular sports and favorite sports star.

Figure 4 An example of source culture in the global textbook
Source: English in Mind (Puchta & Stranks, 2010) On the contrary, When English Rings a Bell emphasized more on source culture (95%) more than international culture (5%).The target culture was completely absent.Unit 2 (page 28) represented the source culture in which the task asked the students to complete sentences based on the pictures of Indonesian traditional clothes and houses provided.Moreover, the source culture was realized in unit 9 (page 159), which passage describes the grandmother's activities based on the picture.She likes cooking and has a Padang restaurant.She always cooks Padang food for her restaurant.Those examples aimed to increase students' local cultures.Another finding suggested that one case of international culture was demonstrated in unit 9 (page 157); the students were asked to explain some junk food such as pizza which is one of Italian food (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Examples of source and international culture in the local textbook
Source: When English Rings a Bell (Khatimah et al., 2014)

Culture themes
English in Mind had a different cultural theme from When English Rings a Bell. Figure 6 predominantly represented social (48%) and environmental themes (35%) in English in Mind.The remaining cultural themes are religion/humanities/arts (8%), personal (7%), and politics and institutions (1%).An example of a social theme (Figure 7) was shown in unit 1 (page 10), explaining well-known people and their professions, such as Fernando Torres, a footballer from Spain, and Angelina Jolie, an American actress.Meanwhile, the passage of unit 12 (page 92) indicates an environmental example revealing Harry and his family's holiday in Spain last month.He said the weather was excellent.Moreover, the religion theme was represented by two girls wearing hijabs (unit 10, page 93), and the theme of the arts referred to the music and art festival (unit 11, pages 84, 85, 86, and 88; unit 13 pages 94, 95, 98, and 99).Additionally, unit 3 (page 28) describes Mohammed's family.Mohammed and his mom are from Bangladesh, but he married a British woman from Liverpool.They live together with their children in a flat.They also have a grocery business selling fruit, vegetables, and drink under their flat.They are hardworking people.Further, the Italian flag was an instance of the political and institutional theme (unit 1, page 13).

Figure 6 Culture themes of the global and local textbooks
On the other hand, When English Rings a Bell was dominated by religion/humanities/arts (55%) and personal theme (40%).The religion theme was embodied by a girl wearing hijab kissing her teacher's hand (unit 1 page 3) and two girls wearing hijab praying before eating (unit 3 page 54).The Arts theme was expressed from the traditional Indonesian cultures (unit 2, page 28).In addition, the other finding showed that When English Rings a Bell had a less personal theme (7%).The instance of the personal theme was discovered in unit 9 (page 161), pointing out a family is eating (Figure 8).Further, the politics and institution and environment themes are absent.

Intercultural communicative competence
The number of activities reflecting the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in English in Mind was insufficient.It was only eleven activities distributed in some units (unit 1 page 15, unit 3 page 29, unit 3 page 29, unit 4 page 32, unit 6 page 43, unit 5 page 43, unit 7 page 57, unit 9 page 71, unit 10 page 78, unit 11 page 85, unit 11 page 85).Those activities addressed the intercultural communicative competence constructs such as knowledge, the skill of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness constructs.Table 3 indicated knowledge (50%), the skill of discovery and interaction (42%), and critical cultural awareness constructs (8%).Attitude and skill of interpreting and relating constructs were not found.Unit 5 (page 43) uncovered the instance of knowledge construct in which the passage described pets worldwide, such as in Arab countries, Africa, China, Japan, and Canada.At the end of the passage, the students were asked to mention the popular pets in their countries.The passage highlighted the students' intercultural knowledge about pets around the globe (Figure 9).Moreover, one of the activities that explained the skill of discovery and interaction construct was asking the students to describe their family after they read about Jenny Groves, who is 15 years old and lives in Bristol.Jenny has a brother who works in a shop.Her dad is a teacher, and her mom works in the bank.Her grandparents live in Reading, London (unit 3, page 29).The exercise acknowledged the students to apply their knowledge and skills to mediate their own culture and other culture.
Besides, the critical cultural awareness construct was only figured out in unit 7 (page 57).The students read a passage about the TV programs that Claire and Paul watched, and they were asked to evaluate whether teenagers in their country were similar to Claire and Paul by providing their rationale.The task encouraged the students' critical cultural awareness by evaluating perspectives or practices in their own culture and other cultures.
On the other hand, intercultural communicative competence was not found in When English Rings a Bell.The activities emphasized the students' culture without comparing the other cultures.They mostly highlighted the students' source culture.

Discussion
The finding showed that the global and local textbooks had different types of cultures.English in Mind written by foreign authors, predominantly emphasizes the target culture.It aligned with previous studies investigating global textbooks (Baleghizadeh & Amiri Shayesteh, 2020;Chao, 2011;Rahim & Daghigh, 2020;Shah et al., 2014;Shin et al., 2011;Yuen, 2011).Besides, it provided international culture with a smaller number than the target culture.It supported a study by Chao (2011) that the global textbooks included international cultures, particularly European and South American cultures.Further, it paid less attention to source culture.The finding corroborates previous scholars' work, such as Rahim and Daghigh (2020), Tajeddin and Teimournezhad (2015), and Chao (2011).
The other finding indicated that the local textbook, When English Rings a Bell, highly dominated the source culture.It neglected the target and international culture.It agreed with Shreeb (2017) and Kirkgöz and Aǧçam (2011).However, it was contrary to Putra et al. (2020) who discovered that the local textbooks provided a dominant source and target culture.It was also in contrast to Aliakbari and Jamalvandi (2013), Nguyen et al. (2021), Liu et al. (2022), andZhang et al. (2022) suggested that the target culture had a high number in local textbooks.Moreover, the result differed from Silvia's (2015) that the local textbook balanced source, target, and international culture.Further, the study was in line with Rahim and Daghigh (2020) that the source culture was dominant but their finding showed that target and international culture were included in the local textbook.
The study also showed the different culture themes between global and local textbooks.English in Mind predominantly contained social and environmental themes.It differed from Yuen's (2011) finding that entertainment, travel, and food were the major theme in the global textbook.Conversely, When English Rings a Bell provided religion/humanities/arts and personal themes.It was similar to Aliakbari and Jamalvandi (2013), who suggested that the local textbooks highly emphasized religion, arts, and humanities.However, it was not congruent with Toledo-Sandoval's (2020) result that English textbooks published in Chile highly contained national geography, national identity, and stereotypes.
The last finding pointed out that intercultural communicative competence was provided.Still, it was insufficient in the global textbook, English in Mind, whereas it was absent in the local textbook, When English Rings a Bell.The former was similar to Moghaddam and Tirnaz (2023) in that the global textbook included intercultural knowledge, attitude, and skills.However, it contradicted Rahim and Daghigh's (2020) work that the global textbook completely did not fulfill the intercultural communicative competence, but the local textbook contained some activities facilitating it.Additionally, the latter was congruent with Silvia (2015) that the local textbook did not reach intercultural communicative competence.The finding was similar to Abid and Moalla (2022) in that intercultural communicative competence was underrepresented in Tunisian textbooks since it emphasized language form and skills more.
To conclude, local and global textbooks presented different types of cultures, culture themes, and intercultural communicative competence.They had an imbalance of source, target, and international cultures.Setyono and Widodo (2019) urged that the textbooks are ideally supposed to promote a balanced culture (students' own culture, target culture, and international culture).Moreover, the global textbook had inadequate intercultural communicative competence, and it was absent in the local textbook.In real life, intercultural communication is essential (Alptekin, 2002).The students must understand their own culture and other cultures to avoid cultural conflicts (Chao, 2011).It also benefits the students to build their respect and tolerance of others (Obaid et al., 2019) and their cultural awareness (Aliakbari & Jamalvandi, 2013).
The findings imply that the Indonesian government should reconsider its policies regarding the mandated use of textbooks for schools implementing the Merdeka curriculum (using English in Mind) or the 2013 curriculum (using When English Rings a Bell).Specifically, policymakers should pay attention to achieving a balance between source, target, and international culture and adequate intercultural competence content.Moreover, the findings advocate that teachers use or modify materials that represent different cultures equally and develop intercultural communicative competence.This will allow students to explore local and global understandings (Rahim & Daghigh, 2020), and they also have a chance to appropriately communicate with people from diverse cultural backgrounds (Miauw & Guo, 2021) in the future.

Conclusion
This study explores the culture types (source, target, and international cultures), culture themes, and intercultural communicative competence represented in the global and local textbooks.The global textbook emphasizes target culture more than international and source culture, whereas the local textbook is more concerned with source culture by excluding the target culture.Additionally, the global textbook provides the social and environmental themes, while the local textbook gives more attention to religion/humanities/art and personal theme.Further, the global textbook does not accommodate adequate intercultural communicative competence, and the local textbook does not provide it.
The study presents an imbalance of source, target, and international cultures and insufficient intercultural communicative competence in both global and local textbooks.The Indonesian government and teachers should note it.Therefore, this study suggests that they should be careful when selecting the teaching and learning materials since students must have exposure to their own culture and other cultures (target and international cultures) and be allowed to understand various cultures to avoid misunderstanding or cultural conflict.The teachers are supposed to provide rich intercultural content for their learning material.
Moreover, this study has some limitations.It analyzed two English textbooks for grade seven (junior high school level).Therefore, it is essential to conduct further studies by exploring English textbooks across different levels, such as primary school, senior high, and higher education, to capture a more comprehensive cultural representation in Indonesian ELT textbooks by employing other cultural frameworks.Besides, it is required to investigate how the teachers apply intercultural communicative competence in English classes.

Figure 7 Figure 8
Figure 7Examples of social themes in the global textbook

Figure 9
Figure 9An example of intercultural knowledge in the global textbook

Table 1
Culture types, culture themes, and intercultural communicative competence AttitudeWillingness to believe other cultures and one's own culture and interest to find out other perspectives both in one's own culture and other cultures (curiosity and openness).

Table 2
, was written by Indonesian authors and published by the Indonesian Ministry of Education in 2014.It had 11 chapters consisting of Description of the textbooks

Table 3
Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the global textbook