| The present paper discusses and evaluates current ideas on the meaning and role of culture in teaching materials, and suggests what aspect of culture should be taken into consideration for designing textbooks.
This paper consists of four main parts. First, I will briefly refer to the characteristics of Japanese secondary school authorized textbooks, which are designed according to The Course of Study set by the Ministry of Education. Second, I will point out that cross-cultural aspects are usually dealt with at a shallow level in the textbooks. Moreover, I will discuss that Western culture, especially Anglo-American culture, has had great influence on the content of the topics. Finally, I will explain that the topics in the textbooks play a very important role in raising studentsf motivation.
In conclusion, I suggest that cross-cultural topics related to socio-linguistic aspects should be included more in textbooks to help students develop their communicative skills. What is to be observed here is how well we cope with cross-cultural topics in depth; a case study approach might be put forward as an alternative. How to deal with such cultural aspects clearly reflects our fundamental attitudes towards foreign language learning and teaching: raising cultural awareness as well as language awareness.
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