Diversidad y contenidos socioculturales en libros de texto para la enseñanza del español como L2

  1. María Dolores López-Jiménez 1
  1. 1 Universidad Pablo de Olavide
    info

    Universidad Pablo de Olavide

    Sevilla, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02z749649

Journal:
Revista de educación

ISSN: 0034-8082

Year of publication: 2018

Issue: 382

Pages: 11-31

Type: Article

DOI: 10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2018-382-390 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Revista de educación

Abstract

Little research has been conducted on sociocultural contents and L2 textbooks (TB) (Risager & Chapelle, 2013). This study analyzes whether the treatment given to sociocultural contents in TB for teaching/learning Spanish as an L2 is either diversified or selective and homogeneous. Thus, nine general TB for teaching Spanish as an L2 were assessed, three TB for each proficiency level, that is, beginning, intermediate, and advanced. The TB were aimed at young adults and adults and published between 2004-2014. The results indicate that (a) the geopolitical diversity of the Spanish-speaking world is present in a little more than half of the analyzed TB; the rest of the TB focus on Spain and/or cover two or more Spanish-speaking countries superficially; (b) the human and social variety of the Spanish-speaking community is absent since certain age groups such as adults/young adults are overrepresented whereas the socioeconomic groups represented by the working class and the poor together with rural environments are underrepresented or absent; (c) the different sociolinguistic uses of the Spanish language (national L1, intranational L2-SL, lingua franca L2-FL/LF) are partially present in less than half of the TB since they only deal with the national and intranational uses. To conclude, it is stated that the sociocultural approach in these TB tends to be selective and homogeneous. It deals with the target culture as it were a homogenous, static and mostly urban entity in which citizens live their lives in a problem-free world. Also the TB proficiency level and publication year do not exert a clear influence on the presence of sociocultural contents in those analyzed TB.

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