The Use of Cultural Elements in the Northstar Textbook Series to Enhance Students’ Intercultural Competence in language skill classes

Intercultural competence is one of the most fundamental components that should be developed among language users and can be attained in many different ways. Several studies have suggested that the teaching and learning of intercultural competence can take place in several settings with the use of different resources including language textbooks. This paper presents the results of a survey on the use of cultural elements in the Northstar textbook series to enhance intercultural competences among students (from freshman year to junior year) majoring in English International Studies at Hue University of Foreign Languages. The findings revealed that most students were aware of the importance of developing their intercultural competence, and efforts have been made by both teachers and themselves to incorporate the development of intercultural competence for students by utilizing available cultural elements in the Northstar textbooks. However, several drawbacks were identified among which the low frequency and the lack of deep cultural elements were the major ones. This paper, as a result, also gives recommendation on effective use of such elements.