Comparison of Cultural Content in Textbooks for French as a Foreign Language

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the cultural content in textbooks for teaching French as a foreign language, based on CEFR guidelines emphasizing culture and intercultural competence. Five textbooks from different periods were selected to examine methodological differences.
We hypothesized that we would find cultural elements in all the textbooks, with the older ones (published before the CEFR), such as Mauger Bleu (1953) and Voix et images de France (1966), being more focused on France and thus more stereotypical. In more recent textbooks, including Connexions 1 (2004), Latitudes 1 (2012), and Génération 1 (2015), we expected a greater diversity of cultural content, including the Francophone world and developing students’ intercultural competence, encouraging them to compare cultures. Despite cultural units being evident from the tables of contents, we decided to also analyse the first three general units of the newer textbooks in search of cultural content.
The analysis showed that even though not all textbooks have cultural units, this does not mean they lack cultural content (e.g. Voix et images de France). The cultural content related only to France depends on the textbook and its authors, and not just on the period of publication. Cultural units of the most recent textbook on the list, for example, are all devoted to France. In our analysis of the intercultural competence content, we found that the inclusion of such tasks is randomly distributed. The analysis of the first three general units confirmed the assumption that cultural content can be found there as well, meaning that we cannot rely solely on the textbook’s table of contents, and that a more detailed unit analysis is required.