Never too young for intercultural competence - evaluating primary-school textbooks from the perspective of Intercultural Competence development
Never too young for intercultural competence - evaluating primary-school textbooks from the perspective of Intercultural Competence development

Summary/Abstract: The main aim of the present paper is to make up for an apparent research gap in retrospective textbook evaluation and to elaborate on the process of identifying the relevant criteria to be used in evaluating the intercultural component of didactic L2 materials. This is a preliminary step in creating textbook assessment instruments which tap various aspects of cultural awareness. A special evaluation checklist was created for the purposes of identifying how selected primary-school textbooks cater for the development of intercultural competence. The evaluation sheet is based on the list of criteria for assessing intercultural competence (IC), as defined by Byram (1997), which comprises such elements as knowledge, skills of relating and interpreting, skills of discovery and interaction, attitudes and critical cultural awareness. The criteria had to be adapted for a textbook analysis and a list of specifications of particular elements was formulated along with 10 corresponding items on the evaluation sheet. The textbook evaluation aimed at answering the question of which elements of intercultural competence are present and how frequently they appear, and which elements seem to be missing in the EFL textbooks for young learners. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out. The results of a sample analysis are presented and discussed. The paper ends with a few concluding remarks.

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