Culture and ELT: Cambodian Teachers' Perception and Practice of Textbook Adaptation to Realize Intercultural Awareness

Article Info ________________ Article History: Received in 22 April 2020 Approved in 14 July 2020 Published in 30 July 2020 ________________


INTRODUCTION
The second language teaching has moved beyond the act of teaching the language itself to accentuate the cultural aspects, to which students get exposure in the classroom (Lessard-Clouston, 1996). Hilliard (2014) asserts that teaching a language without teaching some cultural aspects of that language is virtually inevitable. Concurrently, culture plays a vital role in the mediation of the second language learning process (Dema & Moeller, 2012). That is, while negotiating the meanings of tasks (e.g. cultural activities), students can develop communicative competence (Nhem, 2019). Also, Baker (2011) elucidates that the role of culture in the ELT has vitally contributed to the understanding of Hymes' (1972) notion of communicative competence, placing the significance of sociolinguistic scholarship. This notion has provided scholars with the comprehensive insight regarding the role of culture, developing intercultural competence. Currently, the rising tilt of globalization has placed the forefront of intercultural communication worldwide. Consequently, developing students' intercultural competence for communicative purposes in various settings (e.g. studies, seminars, traveling, or workplace) is beyond necessity (Sobkowiak, 2019;& Wintergerst, & McVeigh, 2011) Given the vitality of culture in the ELT, the investigation on teachers' practices and perceptions of themselves as cultural facilitators in the classroom has been appealing to several studies in diverse contexts (Luk, 2012). Previous studies exploring EFL teachers' perceptions and practices of teaching culture in the ELT (e.g. Lessard-Clouston, 1996;Lim & Keuk, 2018;Luk, 2012;Sercu, et al., 2004;Young & Sachdev, 2011) and the inclusion of culture in EFL textbooks (e.g. Chao, 2011;Hilliard, 2014;& Kim & Paek, 2015) have reported overarching concerns in the territory, which motivated this study. Besides, the approaches to which culture is incorporated in the ELT to prepare students for effective communication, regardless of more attention paid by teachers, have remained ambiguous (Dema & Moeller, 2012). In Cambodia, research about how and if teachers integrate culture in the ELT remains underrepresented in the literature. Thus, this research explored Cambodian teachers' perceptions and practices of the textbook adaptation (with reference to three approaches of textbook development: curriculum transmission, curriculum development; & curriculum-making, proposed by Shawer, (2010) ) to help students develop intercultural awareness in their classroom. The article should be written in 5000-7000 words, single-spaced, 10 point Calisto MT font (excluding references and appendices). Use no indent for the first paragraphs and do not leave a space between paragraphs.

Culture and ELT
The term "culture" is a complex concept that considers multi-dimensions (Kim & Paek, 2015). Peterson (2004) defines culture as a set of deep beliefs and values, usually lived in a group of people in certain countries or regions, and those beliefs and values have impacts on their behaviors and the environment surrounding them. Peterson divides the components of culture into big C culture and little c culture, in which the two types are organized as visible and invisible. Big C visible culture comprises of literature, classical music, architecture while big C invisible culture covers norms, values, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, or laws of society. On the other hand, little c invisible culture includes issues, viewpoints, opinions, preferences, and knowledge of individuals whereas little c visible culture refers to body languages, clothing styles, food, hobbies, or use of space.
Another scholar, Moran (2001) views culture as a vibrant living thing that people commonly practice every day, resulting in the formulation of history or civilizations. Unlike Peterson (2004) who considers culture as the dichotomy of big C culture and little c culture, Moran divides the components of culture into five dimensions which comprise: products, practices, perspectives, communities, and persons (see table 1). These five dimensions were adopted in this study to analyze how teachers help students become aware of cultural aspects appeared in EFL textbooks.
Since one of the goals in the ELT is to foster and solidify students' intercultural awareness (awareness of the target culture and their own culture), current research on the realm of cultural content evaluation on EFL textbooks (Chao, 2011;Hilliard, 2014;Kim & Paek, 2015;Rodríguez, 2015) has revealed overarching issues. Most internationally-published textbooks excessively present the cultural contents of the Western countries, which are not inherently relevant to the Asian context, a study (Chao, 2011) found. Such inclusion of Western-culture orientation can be the foremost challenge for Asian teachers who possess inadequate knowledge regarding the target culture, which resulted in the abandon of cultural contents, as reported in a study (Lim & Keuk, 2018). Moreover, the scarcity of cultural representation of minority groups was also observed in studies by Hilliard (2014) and Pasand (2018). For instance, there was a deprivation of cultural representation concerning Islamic traditions, national ceremonies, and other festivals (Pasand, 2018). Drawn on the review, the underrepresentation of local culture and the inclusion of cultural information outside the context have brought out an issue of the teachers' intellectuality of culturally-based norms or practices included in textbooks, which this is not to mention helping students develop intercultural awareness in the classroom. In addition, research on the area also found an inadequacy of cultural elements related to deep culture (perspectives) (Rodríguez, 2015). Most cultural elements are overwhelmed by surface cultures (products) such as food, holidays, celebrities, or tourist places. Besides, another pivotal issue is the paucity of activities developing students' intercultural awareness, (Chao, 2011;Hilliard, 2014;Pasand, 2018). Most activities in the textbooks evaluated are mainly about reading and listening, and short discussion questions, which require students to work in pairs or groups (Hilliard, 2014). Hilliard (2014) asserts that activities in the textbooks could not amply develop students' intercultural awareness. This can be argued that students should be able to cultivate the scholarship of the target culture and so should they reflect on their culture and themselves. In this sense, cultural awareness could mean to hearing one self's thoughts, feelings, and questions (Moran, 2001), in response to a cultural situation or aspect.
More importantly, research findings on teachers' perceptions and practices regarding teaching culture have remained elusive in different contexts. A study by Lessard-Clouston (1996), who interviewed sixteen Chinese teachers, found that although they acknowledged the importance of culture in the ELT, they taught culture to students sometimes only. The study further revealed that the teachers were uncertain about how to teach culture in the ELT class. The ambivalence of how to teach culture in the ELT was also reported by other studies (Luk, 2012;Young & Sachdev, 2011). Another similar study (Sercu, et al., 2004), which surveyed thirty-five teachers in Spain, reported an incongruent result between teachers' views toward teaching culture and their practices. While the teachers agreed on the significance of teaching culture, they tended to devote more time teaching the language, overlooking the cultural aspects. Lim and Keuk (2018), who interviewed Cambodian teachers in a tertiary setting in Phnom Penh, also found that owing to the teachers' culturally-limited scholarship of the target culture, they sometimes ignored the cultural aspects in the textbooks by focusing the language only.

A conceptual framework of textbook adaption to intercultural awareness
As mentioned earlier, the issue of teaching culture in the ELT is to call for textbook adaptation which can act as the "catalyst" for textbook improvements at the classroom-level. Teachers can develop textbooks as curriculum transmitters, curriculum developers, and curriculum makers (Shawer, 2010a). Curriculum transmitters just deliver textbooks page-by-page and an activity-by-activity. However, since several studies have reported issues over the inclusion of cultural contents and activities in internationally-published English textbooks, this approach (transmission) might not enable students to become aware of cultural contents effectively, especially to develop the intercultural awareness. Research (Shawer, et al., 2008) also indicated that curriculum transmission approach did not show a noteworthy change in students' cognitive and affective, this is not to mention helping students learn cultural contents. Thus, the curriculum development approach might develop culturally-limited learning.
The other alternative approaches would merit the curriculum development approach and curriculum-making approach. Research showed that the two approaches have a significant impact on students' cognition and affective changes (Shawer, et al., 2008). For the curriculum development approach, teachers can adapt textbooks by adding or replacing activities or materials. Considering the textbook adaptation or development, Moran (2001) proposes cultural activities into four groups: developing skills (e.g. dialogues or role plays), gathering information (e.g. personal's real stories or authentic materials), discovering explanations (e.g. explanation of cultural meanings, or projects), and reflection (e.g. relating cultural information to their lives). These activities can be included when teachers develop textbooks and are of essence in developing students' intercultural awareness, especially the awareness of their thoughts or perspectives (knowing oneself).
For the curriculum-making approach, teachers take a step further by analyzing learners' needs, interests, and abilities (Shawer, 2010a). Teachers conduct a need analysis and consult learning content and activities with their students in the classroom. This approach indicates that teachers have more rooms to improve their textbooks to serve the needs, interests, and abilities of their students. Therefore, drawn on the discussion of the textbook adaptation, it becomes apparent that two approaches, namely that the curriculum development and curriculum-making approaches, are more likely to develop students' intercultural awareness magnificently, and especially to overcome the concerns about the cultural inclusion in EFL materials, as reported by several studies stated earlier.

METHODS
This study was conducted in a qualitative approach to investigate teachers' perceptions and practices of the textbook development to help students develop intercultural awareness at one language school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The school was a private one, which provided the General Khmer Education Program (K-12 grade), Chinese Language Program, and the English Language Program. The English Language program was divided into two: the Young Learners program and the Adult English program. Thus, this study was conducted in the Adult English program in which most students were about between 15 and 20 years old.
Upon granting permission from the vice school principal who was in charge of the Adult English Program, the researcher recruited three Cambodian teachers who voluntarily participated in the study. These teachers were purposefully selected based on some criteria (e.g. education & teaching experience). Teachers without these qualifications were not chosen. For the three participants, two teachers hold a Bachelor of Education in TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) with three years of teaching experience while one teacher holds a Bachelor of Education in TEFL, plus a Master of Education and has over ten years of teaching experience. They all graduated from the same university in Phnom Penh. The three participants involved in the study through individual interviews and classroom observations. The individual interviews, which were semi-structured so that the researcher could ask further questions, were conducted nearly one hour prior to the classroom observation, and the conversations were recorded in a mobile phone. For the classroom observation, an observation form was developed and structured into a descriptive note (describing all the activities happened in the classroom) and interpretive note (interpreting the activities written in the descriptive note). The teachers agreed to prepare a lesson and allowed to be observed formally. During the observations, the researcher participated as a silent observer and recorded all the activities happening in the whole class from the beginning to the end in the three sessions. After each observation, the researcher also had a follow-up interview (around 20 minutes) with the teachers to clarify some activities and what they perceived about their teaching. Besides, some documents (e.g. lesson plans and teaching materials) were also collected for the analysis. The data from the interviews and classroom observations were transcribed and entered in NVivo software for the analysis. The data were inductively coded into themes while each participant was given a nickname, P1, P2, and P3 respectively. That means the data were coded with reference to the relevancy of the research objectives. For the textbooks and materials used by the teachers, the researcher also conducted analysis on the cultural content and cultural activities with reference to the Moran's framework of culture and cultural activities presented earlier.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This section provides the study's findings, which are classified into two themes: textbook adaptation and cultural integration in the textbook adaptation. In each theme, teachers' views and practices regarding the textbook adaption and teaching culture are compared and elaborated judiciously.

Textbook Adaptation: Perceptions and Practices
To better understand the integration of culture in the ELT, the study, first, sought to explore teachers' views and practices of the textbook adaptation or development in their teaching profession. The interview results indicated that all the teachers perceived the importance of the textbook development at the classroom-level. The teachers usually developed textbooks prior to or during the process of their teaching. The development of textbooks was regarded as an eclectic way for the implementation of any textbooks. For example, P3 remarked "it is very important that, just like I mentioned already, if we develop the textbooks, the students will learn effectively.'' P1 also pronounced "yes…sometimes I don't follow a hundred percent of the textbook. It's based on the students' performance and abilities to assimilate the lessons." In addition, the driven factors to develop textbooks were primarily about linguistic concerns, learners' abilities, and students' affective. Vocabulary and grammar were considered as the linguistic challenges for these teachers. They were concerned about the level of language difficulties because this would affect students' abilities and motivation in learning. For example: Exactly! Because as we know that our students…I mean some they have limited knowledge. Sometimes the contents, that the textbooks provide them, don't fit to what they need. So, we have to be stick with what they really need.
Acknowledging that the textbook development is pivotal for their teaching, the teachers usually employed the curriculum transmission approach and curriculum development approach at the classroom-level when they faced linguistic constraints, as mentioned earlier. For example, they typically added teaching materials (e.g. grammar or vocabulary practices), activities (group or pair work) and searching for information online. If the content and activities in textbooks were sufficient, they just delivered them. Below are some comments.
in order to understand the contents in the reading, I ask them to work in the group to do more research on the content. For example, if the topic is about … something in Australia and I want them to get familiar with it, I ask them to work in group. I write some questions related to the topic on the whiteboard. Then I ask them to work in the group and after that I select them to talk, to present in the class, and then get them to do the exercise. (P2) I think sometimes I just find some handouts to make them learn. Like if we talk about grammar in the textbook, sometimes it is complicated. So as a teacher, we have to simplify the language points, or to make it easier for the students to understand them. So, I will summarize grammar points on the whiteboard. And after that I provide documents about exercises and let them practice. They can work in groups or work individually based on the time. And after that just let the students to practice the exercises, and I ask them to explain why they choose that answer. (P3) However, the results obtained from the classroom observations revealed different approaches to the textbook development of the three teachers. P1 employed the curriculum-making approach by creating a lesson related to superstitions to teach his students. The development of the lesson was aimed to stimulate students' interest in learning while no specific need analysis was conducted. P3 remarked: So, because sometimes we cannot follow hundred percent from the textbook. We have to adjust the textbook to the outside world. If we teach a hundred percent from the textbook, students might feel bored. So, we have to try to find some interesting lessons for them.
P2 just delivered the textbook activity-by-activity and page-by-page (curriculum transmission approach) while P3 added a handout of grammar exercises and a writing task (your last vacation) (curriculum development approach). Yet, the writing task was not inherently related to the theme of the lesson "celebrities" and one speaking activity in the textbook was excluded. From the observation, P3 developed the textbook by taking into account linguistic challenge (grammar). Thus, the teachers approached the textbooks as a curriculum maker, curriculum transmitter, and curriculum developer. (More details are discussed below.)

Cultural Integration in the Textbook Adaptation Perceptions and the Realities
In the investigation of the teachers' perceptions about teaching culture, the results obtained from the interviews showed the teachers' awareness of the cultural aspects presented in EFL textbooks. For instance, P3 elucidated that "culture is the way of life." He raised some examples of culture such as religion (Buddhism in Cambodia) and communication (greeting). Furthermore, the three teachers believed that language is inextricably intertwined with culture. To learn a language, it is unavoidably to learn the cultural aspects and values of that language, they clarified. Also, culture could facilitate the process of language learning better, P2 explained. The teachers provided some examples of cultural contents (e.g. the way people think, sports, architecture, or histories) appeared in the textbooks that they taught. This means that they have recognized the cultural information in EFL textbooks. Below are the examples from the teachers' interview.
Because we don't just learn the language. We also need to learn the culture of that language. Knowing a language itself is not enough. Knowing the culture helps you understand better about the language. (P2) Currently I am teaching Ellevate. Ellevate is up-to-date. In the book, basically I can see that they focus on the South-East Asia as well, like places, architectures, or sports. Even the sports itself in the Western there is no "Pakror." Maybe you know…sometimes we call it "Pakror." But they mention that it is in South-East Asia. And the textbook also includes interesting resorts in South-East Asia as well. So the students get to know the target language and later on they can understand the cultural aspects outside their own country. (P1) The teachers further expressed that they usually included cultural activities in their teaching. Yet, when it comes to the textbook development to promote cultural learning and intercultural awareness in the ELT, one teacher (P2) just implemented textbooks (curriculum transmission approach) while the other two teachers claimed that they supplemented certain activities or materials (curriculum development). For P1, he would make use of the availability of resources (e.g. smart devices) in the classroom. In this sense, he usually assigned students to work in groups and search for more cultural information; then they had to present their reports to the class. Another teacher (P3) would search for more cultural contents himself and prepare a handout for his students. Thus, the teachers' conceptualization of cultural integration in the textbook development in the ELT is predominantly driven by the extension of cultural content or information.
The findings from the classroom observations also confirmed the interview results. That is, they employed curriculum-making, curriculum transmission, and curriculum development. P1 created the lesson about superstitions, in which students worked in groups and read the handout about superstitions. After that, the students explained the meanings of each superstition. Furthermore, the students were required to search for some superstitions, believed by Cambodian people and present the results to the class. P1 stated "I ask them to do research. They work in groups, so they share their ideas. And the other one is I allow them to use their smart device to search for information." For P2, she just implemented the textbook like what she explained during the pre-observation interview. Her lesson was about comparison and contrast essays. The class began with a brief discussion about two different photos (different types of learning environments) and students were required to reflect on which types of learning environments they would prefer (intercultural awareness). Then, the students were directed to read a text about "learning about differences" and answered some questions concerning cultural differences (e.g. addressing professors' names, inequality of genders in academic settings, and segregation of genders in the classroom) between the USA and Malaysia.
Another teacher (P3) delivered a lesson about "where was he born?" which focused on careers and celebrities (famous first). The students were asked to match some words with the photos in the textbook. Then, the students read a text and answered some questions related to cultural information (e.g. the first person on the moon, the first woman climbing Mt. Everest). Drawn from this discussion, P2 did not involve in the textbook development when taking into consideration teaching culture, except for P1 who created his lesson and P3 who added some cultural questions.

The Development of Intercultural Awareness
While the teachers' integration of culture in their teaching profession was observed in this study, the results drawn from the classroom observations further revealed that the interculturality-stimulated activities were virtually absent in the classrooms, which contradicted the teachers' views shared during the interview. In the interview, the teachers remarked that they usually employed certain strategies or techniques, namely, comparison and reflection to help students become aware of their culture. The purpose of the comparison and reflection was to help students discover what cultural aspects exist or not exist in Cambodia. For example, P3 stated that he raised an example of a cultural element (Pyramid) in Egypt and asked students to think of one of the wonders (Angkor Wat) in Cambodia. Another teacher (P2) told her students about the fast food which represents Western culture, not Khmer culture.
However, as noted previously, such claims were virtually unobservable during the actual classroom observations. Drawn from the data analysis, the teachers' view of the "intercultural awareness" was superficial. They were likely to view "intercultural awareness" as knowing what rather than knowing why and knowing oneself. This view has ignored the significant messages or hidden meanings of cultural elements transmitted in textbooks or teaching materials, and could not reach the development of knowing oneself.
For instance, during the classroom observation P1 organized students into groups to discuss superstitions in the handout. After the discussion, a representative from each group presented their report (explanation of the meanings of superstitions). Then, the students were assigned to search for some superstitions, believed by Cambodian people and they had to present the report again. P1 remarked The meaning behind superstitions … like we can categorize between good superstitions, good lucks, bad lucks. And some superstitions people believe in such as animals, spirits or something like that.
Unfortunately, the deep meanings of each superstition were not explored thoughtfully by the teacher and students. An example of the superstitions is "if a dog howls at night, death is near." Some important questions should have been asked about this superstition. For example, what is the hidden meaning of this superstition? What is death? Do you (students) believe it? Why? Why do people believe it? Are people in other contexts likely to believe it? Are you superstitious? Why? These questions could guide students to develop intercultural awareness and become aware of themselves (knowing self).
P2, who just implemented the textbook, did make students reflect on their preference on learning environment (inside or outside the classroom). However, some cultural aspects in the USA that appeared in the textbook were not compared to those in Cambodia. For instance, students in the USA call their professors by first name, and female students are separated from male students in the class. Such cultural aspects should have been compared and reflected on. Besides, students' feelings, thoughts, or perceptions regarding those cultural aspects should be voiced.
The other participant (P3) presented cultural aspects through reading activities and asking questions. For example, he asked students about famous (film) directors in Cambodia as a reflection on Cambodian celebrities. Yet, students' perspectives on the preferences and values of those celebrities and careers were not sought to interpret. Likewise, the time spending on discussing cultural aspects was rather rushed. Students could discuss cultural information in groups to reflect on their thoughts or feelings.
To conclude, the findings in the current study revealed a caveat about teaching culture, particularly on the intercultural awareness development in the context investigated. Simply put, the teachers viewed the essential role of culture and sough to integrate intercultural activities in the ELT classroom, yet the teaching practices could not sufficiently realize their promises.

DISCUSSION
The vitality of the textbook development at the classroom-level in the pursuit of textbook improvements is not an emerging concept (Graves, 2008). This notion conveys an essence that how textbooks are implemented in the classroom to enhance learning outcomes is of the concern. In the current study, the three teachers subscribed to the belief that the development of textbooks to deal with students' interests and abilities, and linguistics challenges is fundamentally needed. Such concerns are added to the literature and support the previous study (Duarte & Escobar, 2008), which investigated the use of adapted materials on the impacts of the level of students' motivation. The study (Duarte & Escobar, 2008) indicated that the adaptation of textbooks (curriculum development approach) has more merits in terms of enhancing students' affective, and tackling with linguistics difficulties. The same results were reported in another study (Shawer, et al., 2008) which revealed a significant growth of students' cognition and affective as the result of the textbook development. This discussion makes it apparent that the anxiety of students' affective toward language learning and linguistic difficulties requires teachers to develop textbooks to make them suitable for their classroom contexts.
Given the textbook adaptation or development at the classroom-level, the approaches to which teachers can develop their textbooks take in form of curriculum transmission, curriculum development, and curriculum-making (Shawer, 2010a). In this study the teachers' views and practices on the textbook development were not compromised. This means that although the teachers' perception of the importance of the textbook development was revealed, they approached the textbooks differently as the curriculum transmitter, curriculum developer, and curriculummaker. Such differences in the textbook development could be due to certain driven factors. For example, a study (Shawer, 2017) exploring teachers-driven factors on the textbook development, indicated an array of aspects such as expediency and quality of textbook, work pressure, teacher training, teacher experience, teachers' preferences of teaching style, teacher-content style and beliefs, and institution policy. Additionally, these differences in the textbook development indicate a tilt from experts-driven practice of textbooks to the context-driven practice of textbooks, in which teachers in diverse educational settings seek to compromise the informed textbooks with the prerequisites of their social contexts.
In the current study, what can be concerned regarding the textbook development is the strategies of each textbook adaptation (development) approach employed to develop textbooks. For example, the needs analysis was not included in the curriculum-making approach, and the practice of the curriculum-making was naively based on the teacher's presumption in the hope of attracting students' interest and motivation in learning. That is, no needs analysis was conducted on the students before the selection of the materials used in the classroom. Shawer (2010a) argues that some strategies including needs assessment, selection of topics, curriculum sequence, curriculum skeleton of pedagogical topics, and curriculum skeleton of pedagogical activities should be implemented orderly in the curriculum-making approach. Besides, the adaptation of the pedagogical activity (writing task) in the curriculum development approach was rather irrelevant to the theme of the lesson being carried out. On the subject of the material adaptation, two vital criteria, namely, the effectiveness of the materials or activities for attaining fruitful outcomes of the course, and the appropriateness for the teachers and learners to work on, should matter most (Grave, 1996in Marand, 2011. According to Grave, the appropriateness should take into account students' comfort and familiarity with the materials, students' interests, the relevance of the content, and the level of language difficulties. Furthermore, the interpretation of the textbook development at the classroom-level to develop intercultural awareness in the ELT in this study reveals two caveats in the territory. First, despite the fact that all the teachers perceived the importance of the transmission of diverse cultural values in the ELT, they approached the textbooks differently (curriculum-maker, curriculum transmitter, & curriculum developer). The curriculum-maker developed the lesson by assigning students to search for some cultural information (superstitions) lived in the Cambodia context while the curriculum transmitter just delivered the textbook. The curriculum developer included some cultural questions related to the content in the textbook. This result pinpoints a caution about the delivery of the validity of cultural contents, which are usually biased in EFL textbooks, as reported in several studies (e.g. Chao, 2011;Hilliard, 2014;Kim & Paek, 2015;Rodríguez, 2015). Second, although the teachers' pursuit of teaching cultural aspects was aligned with the realities in the classroom, there was a paucity of the interculturality-stimulated activities in the three classrooms. For instance, one teacher (curriculum transmitter) only asked students to reflect on their preferences on the types of learning environment, and another teacher (curriculum developer) just asked the students about famous (film) directors in Cambodia. The other teacher (curriculum-maker) did not ask students to reflect on themselves about whether they are superstitious. Herein, most cultural values were not explored by the teachers and students. This result of the paucity of the activities to develop intercultural awareness in the ELT supports previous studies (e.g. Clouston, 1996;Luk, 2012;Sercu, et al., 2004;& Young & Sachdev, 2011), as mentioned earlier.
More importantly, the curriculum transmission approach produces culturally-limited learning, as conceptualized earlier. What is new is that either the curriculum development approach or curriculum-making approach (Shawer, 2010a) is essential only if the teachers are aware of the tactics of teaching culture. In this study, it is likely that the teachers' knowledge of teaching culture might determine how they approach the textbooks. According to the analysis in this study, it can be concluded that the provision of cultural information rather than the development of intercultural awareness is more likely to be concerned by the teachers. Theoretically speaking, four cultural dimensions, including products, practices, communities, and persons, are commonly introduced in the ELT classrooms while the dimension of perspectives is excluded in this study. Moran (2001) categorizes the four dimensions as explicit or tangible culture and perspectives as tacit or intangible culture, which requires more conscious learning and reflection, drawing on learners' scholarship of the civilizations. Thereby, it is recommended that the development ELT courses for teachers should not be overshadowed the component of teaching culture.

CONCLUSION
Drawn on the data analysis, this paper presents an incongruous result between teachers' perceptions and their practices concerning the textbook development and teaching culture in respect of interculturality-stimulated activities. The teachers in this study believed the importance of the textbook development at the classroom-level to enhance the effectiveness of the textbook implementation, in terms of enriching students' interests and addressing linguistics difficulties (e.g. new words or grammar) to fit students' abilities. Yet, there was a diversity of the actual teaching practices, from which concerns arose. Thereby, it is advised that teacher professional development on the textbook adaptation or development should be provided to the teachers so that they are better informed about how to develop textbooks in a way that helps students learn the language successfully (also suggested by research by Shawer, 2010b). Another caveat should be about the development of students' intercultural awareness, which is found to be eluded in this study. Thus, teacher training about teaching culture is also recommended in the context of the study and beyond.
This study also carried some limitations; first, the numbers of participants were small (only three teachers), which means that more participants might reveal different findings. Second, the classroom observation on the three teachers was observed one session only. More classroom observations would reveal more actual practices of the teachers' teaching and the data might be different.