Global ELT coursebooks: A comparative study to examine if there has been any shift in proportion of cultural content in a 1st and 4th edition of English File

In the context of English as a global language, more and more people are learning it for the purposes of L2 to L2 communication. Criticism of global coursebooks is that they still operate within an ESL, native-speaker model. This article explores the arguments that these textbooks are culturally biased in favour of the target culture. The literature and studies show that publishers have not reacted to the changes that have happened to the international nature of English, nor have they made any amendments to the content of global coursebooks in reaction to criticism. A comparative content analysis was conducted on a first edition of English file (Latham-Koenig and Oxenden 1996) and a fourth edition of the same publication (Latham-Koenig et al. 2020) to examine what changes have been made with regard to the proportion of cultural content contained. The findings agreed with previous related studies; however, there was observation of a shift from the proportion of British target culture in favour of neutral, universality of culture. This article goes on to advocate the inclusion of more localised content or at least activities which encourage the inclusion of L2 culture.