“Oxente!” a curious look on the cultural appoach in didatic materials of English

Abstract

This article had the objective of analyze the focus that is given to culture in the English language didactic materials examining how the cultural aspects are treated and approached in the foreign language classroom, identifying, this way, how culture builds knowledge. It also attempted to investigate if the students from the didactic material on are exposed to a cultural diversity suitable to the global English speakers reality nowadays and to the linguistic status of worldwide lingua franca acquired by the idiom. It was accomplished a data analyze in the didactic collection adopted by a regular private school from Salvador through a checklist developed to quantify and register the cultural plurality contained in such didactic material. It was noticed among other things that there isn’t a diversity of cultural aspects in the material since it tends to standardization and singularize the English language. It was concluded that it is necessary to expose the students to diverse possibilities of different cultural realities in a way to prepare them to a real experience in language. Due to the deficit referred to the questions of inter(multi)culturality found in the analyzed material, it is recommended that the teacher could be able to develop a great sensibility to the specific necessities of each class and try to adapt the materials available to his/ her own use according to his/ her pedagogical practices.