Culture in language textbooks: Criteria for evaluation and their application to five Russian language textbooks

The present study had two specific goals. The first was to develop a detailed set of criteria for the objective analysis and evaluation of the explicit cultural content of introductory level post-secondary language textbooks. The finalized set of criteria consists of twenty-nine yes/no questions which are grouped into the following topic areas: (A) cultural goals, (B) presentation of cultural material, (C) sequencing of material, (D) characteristics of cultural material, (E) integration of cultural material, (F) language of presentation, (G) length of presentation, and (H) authentic cultural materials. The second goal of the study was to apply the set of criteria to five recently published or reissued Russian-language textbooks: Russian for Everybody (1992), Russian Alive! (1993), Golosa (1994), Troika (1996) and Nachalo (1996, 1997). All of the evaluated textbooks exhibited serious inadequacies with respect to the presentation of cultural material (topic B) as well as sequencing of material (topic C), and a majority were rated inadequate with respect to characteristics of cultural material (topic D), integration of material (topic E), language ofpresentation (topic F) and use of authentic cultural material (topic H). Only topic areas A (cultural goals) and G (length of presentation) saw a majority of the texts receive a rating of adequate. As a result, the explicit cultural component of each of the five textbooks received an overall rating of inadequate. On a positive note, however, the results of the evaluation seemed to indicate that the cultural components of Russian language textbooks are improving with time, demonstrating that the research and scholarship on culture and language textbooks is having a certain degree of influence on today's textbook writers.