Local culture and beyond in Portuguese-produced English language teaching (ELT) coursebooks

Abstract

The issue of how to deal with 'culture' in the context of English language teaching materials is not entirely recent and much debated (Byram, 1997; Akbari, 2008). Seminal work in the field includes Kramsch (1993) who has extensively discussed the importance of culture, cultural space, the indivisibility of culture and language and learner identity. Our attention has also been drawn to the dangers of a 'hidden curriculum' with respect to cultural content (Cunningsworth, 1995; Hurst, 2008) or the potentially hegemonic socio-political dimension of international coursebooks (Holliday, 1994; Gray, 2002). However, within the context of Portuguese-produced ELT materials, research is less widely available.