Journal of English Language Teaching

Culture and History: A Critical Reading of ESL Textbooks of Telangana State

K. Venkanna

Research Scholar, EFL University

Keywords: culture, History, Telangana, ESL Textbooks

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Abstract

One of the major themes of post-colonial literature is aiming for identity which can be linguistic, religious, cultural, social, national, gender identity, etc. Furthermore, the NCF-2005 and RTE-2009 specified that the concerns of the marginal classes, regions, cultural and historical aspects would be taken into consideration while preparing curriculum of respective states and subsequently while designing textbooks. After the formation of Telangana as a new state, the people of the state exhibited a pressing need for Local, Global and Global Identity. As a result, the state Higher Education and Ts-scErT (2014) recommended that school subjects should be designed and developed from the perspectives of the cultural and historical issues in order to have a regional identity.  To achieve this, a curriculum renewal process was carried out and the textbooks of mother tongue (L1) and social studies were given distinctive changes at the school level. While the concerns of most of the reviews are very general and minimal, only a fewer number of reviews and changes have been brought in the EsL textbooks after the formation of the state. At this juncture, it becomes pertinent to revisit and study how the issues of culture and history of the new state have been dealt in the textbooks. This write-up, is an attempt to reinvestigate the cultural and historical representations of various facets through a critical analysis of the textbooks of the state in the light of the birth of a new state in 2014.

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References

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