Cultural Literacy in English Language Instruction Documents of Senior High School

Abstract

Cultural literacy represents individuals ability to understand and appreciate the similarity and differences in customs, values, attitude, habit, beliefs of ones culture and others culture. This study investigated whether cultural literacy is addressed in the documents of English Language Instruction in Senior High School. Content Analysis was carried out to analyze three text books in Senior High School.The data was all cultural literacy-related words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and illustrations in reading texts and tasks of the books. The study revealed that cultural literacy-related words were unequally distributed throughout the books, from text, task (learning activities) to assessment. The cultural aspects are addressed in reading texts and tasks are represented by information about national tourist spots and national heroes, national celebrations, and folk stories. They were not even explicitly stated that the teacher might not be aware of them, let alone adressed them in the teaching-learning activities. It could be tentatively concluded then that cultural literacy was not deliberately adressed in the documents of English Language Instruction under this study.