An analysis of the English textbook for secondary students in Meghalaya: The Text as a mirror of cultures

Abstract

English textbooks for schools have an important role to play whether in developing literary competence or communicative competence. The literary text including school textbooks for English have always been a great source both for cultural awareness and cultural preservation. The study seeks to find out the cultural content of the English Textbook prescribed for class IX Students in Meghalaya as per the State Board. The main objectives of the study are to seek the teachers’ opinion of the textbook based on its cultural content and to analyse the textbook Descriptive research method was adopted, the sample included secondary school teachers. Questionnaire and content analysis have been used for data sources and analysis. The main findings reveal that the textbook contains cultural content ranging from source culture to target culture and even to international target culture. A significant finding from both the teachers’ opinion and textbook analysis by the researcher is that source culture is evident in the text highlighting the diverse Indian cultures but neglecting the local contextualization or in other words the local source culture which has been identified as an essential component in National Curriculum Framework for School education 2023 recommended as per National Education Policy, 2020.