The Representation of American Culture in EFL Textbooks in Hungary

In today’s globalized world, it is gradually becoming more and more important to learn languages. In order to do that effectively, teachers and students need appropriate materials, tools and teaching aids to achieve their language learning goals. That is why textbook analysis has gained more and more importance throughout the past years, textbooks being among the most important teaching and learning aids. It is common knowledge that students are more inclined to acquire a foreign language if they are exposed to materials which interest them. The topics that pupils usually find interesting are cinema, technology, and culture. That is why this paper aims at analysing the various types of American cultural representation in two textbook series that are commonly used in Hungarian schools: the English File and the Pioneer series. They are analyzed in terms of vocabulary, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension from the perspective of American cultural representation. The findings are the following: although one way or another both series include certain elements of American culture, texts and tasks – in terms of vocabulary and syntax – tend to stay neutral, utilizing vocabulary that may represent all English standard varieties at once. It suggests a lack of cultural diversity, which is a serious shortcoming in terms of pluricentricity, but can be interpreted as an advantage in terms of contextual and grammatical coherence.