Too Little Attention to Culture in Dutch and Flemish Textbooks to Learn Dutch as a Foreign Language
Abstract
It is generally acknowledged that culture and intercultural competence should be an inherent part of the foreign language teaching process. There is, however, no consensus as to the form and extent to which they should be incorporated not only into curricula but also coursebooks. By using Hofstede’s “Onion Diagram”, this paper looks at four coursebooks for Dutch as a foreign language and zooms in on the topic of “eating and drinking” to determine their (inter)cultural content. The results show that the focus in these coursebooks is on the symbols, i.e. the outer layer of the diagram. The authors of the paper offer explanations, some critical remarks and pedagogical implications, and call for a comparative approach to teaching culture and intercultural competence.
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