Do tasks and exercises in English Foreign Language textbooks promote Intercultural Competence? An empirical study

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,5, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Since the textbook is a central teaching and learning aid, this work will examine a part of the tasks and exercises of two books. Referring to this, textbook research is a relevant field of study, because a critical look at current teaching material is always needed to ensure that it is appropriate for pupils as well as it is of good quality considering the achievement of educational goals. To give exemplary research findings, the analysis will focus on textbooks of class eight at Hauptschule (Blue Line 4) and Realschule (Red Line 4) in Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany published by Klett, whereupon in each case the recent version of the year 2017 was chosen. To narrow down the research project furthermore, the work will zoom in on the first unit of the books, which is ¿Gateway NYC¿. The main topic of this bachelor¿s thesis will therefore be: ¿Do tasks and exercises in English Foreign Language textbooks promote Intercultural Competence? - An exemplary analysis based on the topic New York¿. The intention of the work on hand is to evaluate the quality of tasks and exercises for the promotion of Intercultural Competence.
To answer the main question of this thesis, the work has been divided into two parts. The first one summarises the most important information and theses on the topic. The second one examines the available textbook material in detail by means of an empirical method. In the theoretical chapter, Intercultural Competence with respect to its definition, importance and establishment in didactics will be explained. Thereupon, the relevance of tasks and exercises in class will be discussed and four quality features of assignments promoting Intercultural Competence will be chosen, which will allow an evaluation of these. In the following, the tasks from the Blue Line 4 and Red Line 4 schoolbooks will be analysed. After investigating the tasks¿ quality individually, the findings will be comprehended and discussed. In the conclusion, the fundamental research findings will finally be recapped and the question of the bachelor¿s thesis will be answered.