Despite textbooks serving as a primary educational resource, they are not inclusive. While the argument that the native speaker (NS) lingua-cultural approach or dominance in textbooks may impede English as a lingua franca (ELF)-aware teaching and learning has been accepted by some scholars, this assertion is supported by little empirical evidence obtained from the evaluation of its impact on classroom practice. Besides, English language teaching (ELT) researchers have suggested different ways to use textbooks for communicative teaching and these suggestions have not yet been contested from an ELF perspective. Thus, this paper aims to address these concerns. Questionnaire surveys, textbook analysis, classroom observations, and interviews are employed to conduct an ethnographic inquiry into classroom practice in order to obtain local knowledge about how the NS-based textbooks are used and whether the advice of ELT researchers on using textbooks encourage or discourage ELF-aware pedagogy in local contexts. The results show a minimum impact of the NS approach and of the US dominance on ELF-related classroom practice because teachers and students critically evaluate and skillfully use NS-based textbook and US lingua-cultural resources. Additionally, NS-based textbooks alone do not determine ELF-aware classroom practice. It is how teachers and students rely on and use NS resources in the textbooks that determine how SELF-aware teaching and learning is realized. Lastly, certain strategies for using textbooks and lingua-cultural resources suggested by ELT and ELF scholars effectively facilitate ELF-aware classroom practice. However, not all the pedagogical suggestions proposed by the previous studies are feasible in the teaching situations studied herein.
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