Cultural Representation in “Bahasa Inggris Work in Progress” Textbook for Grade X

This study investigates the representation of cultural elements in the "Bahasa
Inggris Work in Progress" textbook for Grade X students in Indonesia. Despite the
growing emphasis on intercultural competence in English language education,
Indonesian EFL textbooks tend to present culture only at a surface level, potentially
limiting students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) development.
This study therefore aims to identify and analyze the cultural elements represented
in the textbook using a descriptive qualitative approach with content analysis. The
data were drawn from all reading materials and visual contents across six chapters
and analyzed using Yuen's (2011) framework, which classifies cultural elements
into Products, Practices, Perspectives, and Persons. The findings reveal a significant
imbalance: Products is the most dominant element with 30 instances (68%),
followed by Persons with 9 instances (21%), Perspectives with 4 instances (9%),
and Practices with only 1 instance (2%). Source culture is most prominent in the
Persons element, international culture slightly leads the Products element, and
Practices contains no Source or International culture representation at all. These
findings indicate that the textbook remains surface-level in its cultural
representation, leaving deeper cultural elements underrepresented. Such imbalance
may hinder students' ability to engage meaningfully with diverse cultures,
particularly given the Merdeka Curriculum's emphasis on Global Diversity
(Berkebinekaan Global).