A CRITICAL ECOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF EFL TEXTBOOKS IN INDONESIA

Abstract

Ultimately, environmental issues should be incorporated into every nation's curriculum in order to equip future generations with the necessary foundations to protect and enhance the ecology. This occurrence inevitably demands numerous countries to integrate the instructional approach to build environmentally-based concepts in textbooks. In the Indonesian context, whether the textbooks facilitate environmental education (EE) to promote ecological principles or foster students' competence in recurrent environmental concerns is ambivalent. In particular, the current study attempts to analyze the environmental verbal and visual contents engaged in Indonesian EFL textbooks. This study also unpacks the extent to which EFL textbooks in Indonesia accurately reflected the ecolinguistics perspective. Content analysis was employed in this study, adapting Stibbe‟s ecolinguistics framework and Kress&Van Leuween‟s visual grammar theory. The findings revealed that EE in Indonesian EFL textbooks tends to highlight the natural beauty and ecotourism locations while mainly disregarding ecological degradation. In contrast, EFL textbooks must emphasize contemporary world issues to cultivate positive attitudes and ecological consciousness among learners. Subsequently, these findings have significant consequences for the development of environment modules in Indonesian EFL textbooks.