خلاصه ماشینی:
"Though the adopted policy might seem consistent with the pro-active strategy of protecting the local culture, the way it is managed seems to be counterproductive in the sense that it detracts from the development of communicative competence Having carried out a thorough analysis of Iranian ELT textbooks at high school level, Aliakbari (2004) uncovered the fact that the cultural elements in the four course books for high school students is underrepresented.
While Chastain (1988), McGrath (2002) and many others strongly support the idea of teaching the culture of a foreign language that is taught, the English textbooks in Iran are devoid of the target culture.
Seelye formulates what he himself calls a super goal for the teaching of culture: "All students will develop the cultural understanding, attitudes, and performance skills needed to function appropriately within a segment of another society and to communicate with people socialized in that culture" (Seelye 1993, cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1997).
Therefore, the major purpose motivating this study is to find out, whether the available English materials used in the Iranian context provide sufficient content for students' cultural understanding and whether they make them ready for intercultural communication.
In reality, however, what most teachers and students seem to lose sight of is the fact that "knowledge of the grammatical system of a language (grammatical competence) has to be complemented with an understanding of culture-specific meanings (communicative or rather cultural competence)" (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002, p."