IAFOR Journal of Education: Language Learning in Education

Volume 10 – Issue 1 – 2022

A Corpus-Based Comparison of Inclusiveness in L2 Reading Materials
for Refugee Children
Meliha R. Simsek
University of Health Sciences, Turkey

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Abstract
Despite increased emphasis on the role of inclusive practices and materials in post-COVID-19
classrooms and warnings about implicit biases against disadvantaged groups, the textbook
problem has rarely been approached with equity measures in mind. This multimethod study
aimed to investigate to what extent L2 reading materials, locally produced and used for refugee
education in Turkey and New Zealand, include all children with different proficiency levels,
gender identities and cultural backgrounds using corpus-driven methods. All verbal andnonverbal texts from ten thematically similar third-grade storybooks were subjected toqualitative and quantitative analysis. Comparisons against measures of grammatical and lexical
complexity, and of gender and cultural equity revealed that despite both being far fromachieving the ideal composition for creating inclusive learning-friendly environments, TSL
materials were lagging further behind ESL counterparts. They depended on almost uniform
sets of easy-to-read narratives embodying simpler grammatical features and high-frequency
words, and thus needed extension with relatively elaborate ones to accommodate mixedabilities. Gender disparities were institutionalised through male overrepresentation in heromaking, negative stereotyping, familial and occupational identification, and engagement inmonetary and mobility activities, but occasionally ameliorated, in the ESL case, by reversing
conventionally-gendered domestic, technical and intellectual skills in texts and illustrations.
The widest gap was observed in cultural representations because TSL materials, written froma tourist’s perspective, focused on imposing superficial knowledge of target-culture elements,
and ESL materials on ensuring relevance through greater use of elements from diverse cultures.
Therefore, egalitarian representations in gendered and cultural contents are required for theirrehabilitation.
Keywords: equity, inclusive learning-friendly environments, refugee children

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As the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic approaches, one thing the world haslearned is that regardless of age, gender, class, colour, ethnicity, creed and geography, everyone
can become vulnerable to multiple losses (i.e. of their lives, loved ones, homes, jobs andschools) within a breath, and in the absence of welcoming communities, they may come out of
this global ordeal materially and emotionally needier than before. Therefore, one of theprincipal buzzwords of the new millennium in education, “inclusion”, has been gaining wider
acceptance with the help of the democratising virus, which already changed the learning
mediums dramatically, for instance, by moving classes online and increasing accessibility (orsometimes lack thereof) for all kinds of teachers and students around the world. Since theintroduction of the concept of inclusion by the UNESCO Salamanca Statement, what started
out as a deficit-based medical model of educating disabled children separately in special
schools, and later with non-disabled peers in mainstream classrooms has eventually evolved
into its interactional version, where individual learner differences are treated not as problem
sources but rather as opportunities for teachers to enrich mutual learning experiences(Ainscow, 2020; Smith, 2018; Stadler-Heer, 2019). This shift towards inclusive education cancertainly be defended from different angles: the necessity of educating all children together
leads to development of innovative teaching methods that create learning environments
responsive to their specific needs (educational), assists to ingrain the principles of justice andnon-discrimination in the future adults (social), economises on educational costs by notestablishing different types of special schools (economic) and derives from the basic humanright to get equitable access to quality education (legal) (Ainscow, 2020).
Whichever of these agendas are pursued in educational settings, it is essentially “equity” inprovision of what exactly every learner needs to thrive rather than “equality” of shares intreatment that gives a greater reason to fully embrace inclusive transformation in the language
classrooms as well (Smith, 2018). Compared to most teacher-led content-area classes, language
lessons can be claimed to provide a more conducive atmosphere to supportive learning for two
immediate reasons. Neurodiversity, language, culture and emotion-related learning difficulties
become more detectable during language use, and especially English language teachers’
familiarity with communicative methodologies and materials puts them at an advantage interms of the implementation of inclusive education (Smith, 2018). When it comes to tacklingdifferent learning challenges, they have been observed to capitalise on their long-standing
experience in differentiating and scaffolding the learning content and processes mainly throughthe use of access-self, multilevel and multimodal texts, participatory and multisensory
activities, explicit grammar and strategy instruction and also bilingual support (British Council,
2012; Glas et al., 2021; Smith, 2018; Stadler-Heer, 2019; Tomlinson, 2011).
According to this year’s report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) (2021), the education of over 1.5 billion learners globally has been disrupted by the
COVID-19 pandemic, but 7.9 million refugee children, with already high out-of-school rates(48%), may possibly have been hardest hit by the school closures. In other words, more thanhalf of refugee students might also be estimated to have been struggling with learning in analien classroom, where the lesson is delivered in a different language from their own, andthrough learning materials that are written for children with different personal, language,
learning and cultural backgrounds. As a result, the second/additional (L2) language teacher’s
use of inclusive practices and materials has become more critical than ever in order to reduce
the language learner’s vulnerability and foster resilience in refugee children. Also, UNESCO(2015) strongly emphasises the role of teaching materials in ensuring inclusiveness in theclassroom, and warns about the hidden prejudice and discrimination against disadvantaged
groups. Yet, rarely has the textbook problem been approached with equity measures in mind.

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For this reason, the current study focuses on assessing whether the reading materials used forteaching Turkish and English as a second language (TSL/ESL) reflect diversity in terms oflearner abilities, gender and culture, or, in other words, how level-appropriate, gender-fair andnon-discriminatory they are for arming refugee learners with the enabling knowledge oflanguages.
Literature Review
Detailed overviews of various literacy and language programs for displaced people in
Hanemann’s (2018) background paper for UNESCO’s 2019 Global Education Monitoring
Report have demonstrated that despite higher concentrations of refugees and migrants in the
Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the educational needs of young and adult refugees
can be argued to have largely gone unnoticed on the basis of limited information on literacy
and language provision for them. On the other hand, those settling in high-income regions suchas North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand are provided with better educational
facilities because the inclusion of refugees in the labour market is regarded as “a priority goal”,
and at least basic or secondary education and proficiency in the host language must be attained“to succeed in post-industrial economies” (Hanemann, 2018, p. 57). In their efforts to fostersocial integration through L2 proficiency, they also take a whole-of-government approach andimplement a variety of school-based interventions according to refugee learners’ individual
needs (Auckland UniServices, 2007; Hanemann, 2018). In the New Zealand context, thefollowing practices have thus been recommended (Auckland UniServices, 2007; Hanemann,2018):••••••

Initial, diagnostic and curriculum-based assessments of both L1 and L2 are carried out
to improve instructional planning and provide appropriate learning experiences.
Non-English-speaking-background (NESB) children are included in mainstream
classes to increase interaction and reduce stigmatisation by native-English-speaking
peers.
Pull-out ESL classes are developed for the ones with special needs (e.g. true beginners
or traumatised refugees) and made more relevant through connections with contentarea learning.
Peer-tutoring, pairing new arrivals with English-speaking peers, or preferably L1speaking former refugees (e.g. as cultural facilitators) is utilised for familiarising themwith the New Zealand school system.
The curriculum also draws on the home languages, cultures and experiences of refugee
children.
The responsibility of their L2 learning and acculturation belongs to not just ESL
teachers but all in the school environment.

As shall be seen in other examples of good practice, appreciation of the refugee student’s own
heritage, as well as reciprocity in efforts to learn about each other’s language and culture
alongside the majority’s actually lay at the heart of effective approaches to refugee education.
In initial attempts to humanise shared classrooms, Ghosn’s (2013) materials development
project is worthy of mention. Despite even minor differences in (Arabic) accent and culture,
Palestinian refugee children had still been withdrawn while attending United Nations Relief
and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and experienced academic difficulties. This was due,in part, to on a national curriculum that was intent on English-medium content-area instruction,and high-level language textbooks were developed exclusively for Lebanese children withpotential interests in national festivals and foreign travel (Ghosn, 2013). Unsurprisingly,

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together with their overworked teachers, the refugee students were later found to react
positively to the alternative lower primary materials that achieved relevance with gradually
increasing difficulty levels for both literacy and L2 instruction and familiar content from their
immediate environments such as readily identifiable characters with Arabic names, Palestiniancostumes, households and rituals (Ghosn, 2013).
In more recent models of inclusive practice, tolerance of L1 use, or more appropriately L1support and use of multimodal storytelling techniques have become the hallmarks ofplurilingual classrooms, where students from migrant or refugee backgrounds and majority
peers can act as co-informants of their native languages and cultures and be guided into
working towards a common goal by both their language and content-area teachers. In the
British Council’s project from the Lebanese context, Grappe and Ross (2019) involved refugeeparents, speaking Bedouin Arabic, Kurdish or Turkmen, in the co-construction of aparent/teacher training pack, consisting of 13 awakening-to-languages activities (e.g. What did
you do today? worksheets), Arabic translations and images for adults with limited or no L1
literacy. In this way, Syrian preschool children were enabled to compare the teacher-mediatedknowledge about different cultural aspects with the parent-mediated knowledge about theirhome situation and share with their teacher and classmates at school (Grappe & Ross, 2019).
Minuz et al. (2020) also explained that Italian teachers provided their child readers with
opportunities to explore multilingual books via the Mamma Lingua [Mother-tongue] project
website, got them to discuss, retell and translate the stories into Italian with help from theirteachers and peers and develop language awareness besides reading for pleasure. Similarly,
Heathfield and Goksu’s (2019) case study of YouTube storytelling performances by a class of
25 secondary pupils (14 migrants) in Hannover showed that telling and hearing stories fromtheir home and other foreign countries allowed them to use their native and additional
languages (English) in a non-threatening atmosphere and also promoted mutual understanding
and respect for their unique identities. In each case, alternation between the home and school
languages serves to create diverse third spaces, where the teacher and learners can jointly
construct new knowledge (L2 output) based on their native resources (L1 inputs) (Makalela,
2015; Minuz et al., 2020). The use of translanguaging strategies has thus come to be regarded
as a key indicator of educational equity in progressive language education (Li & Luo, 2017;
Minuz et al., 2020).
A closer look at recent research on refugee education in Turkey has nonetheless manifested
that participant views on major issues facing refugee learning partners were elicited almost
invariantly via semi-structured interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, including
elementary teachers ( Bulut et al., 2018), teachers of Turkish language and literature ( Alan &Alptekin, 2021), school counsellors (Bozan & Celik, 2021), headteachers from refugeepopulated areas (Eren, 2019), field-researchers (Bozan & Celik, 2021), refugee students( Bozan & Celik, 2021) and parents (Celik et al., 2021) alongside language assistants (e.g.
Morali, 2018; Taskin & Erdemli, 2018) and coordinators (Bozan & Celik, 2021; Eren, 2019)from temporary education centres (TECs) and the EU-funded project on promoting integrationof Syrian children into Turkish education system (PICTES). However, they could not go
beyond redocumenting persistent problems related to the national curriculum, instructional
materials, in-service teacher training, administrative procedures, school infrastructure andcommunication with refugee and other students or their parents (Celik, 2019; Celik et al., 2021;
Eren, 2019).

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In these studies, their greatest challenge of communicating in the local/official language also
seemed to be primarily linked with psychosocial factors such as Syrian refugees’ concerns
about separation, exclusion and assimilation (Celik et al., 2021; Tunga et al., 2020). Yet, twoother issues, top-ranking next to their language deficit, namely lack of appropriate L2 materials
and qualified language teachers, might actually be the overlooked culprit that places theinsurmountable language barrier to refugee learners’ school success and integration.
Furthermore, Tunga et al. (2020) have pointed out in their recent review of 25 descriptive
studies that there was a considerable lapse of time between the beginning of Arabic-medium
education at the now-closed TECs and enrolment of refugee children in Turkish-medium publicschools. Consequently, another contributing factor could also be the much-delayed decision toteach Turkish to Syrian children because of a miscalculation that displaced Syrians would
return home ten years on from the war (Tunga et al., 2020).
As an interim solution to increase access to education for an ever-growing number of refugee
children, over-age students have eventually been admitted to first grade and monolinguallytaught the national curriculum elusive for many by mostly untrained teachers (Celik, 2019;
Morali, 2018; Taskin & Erdemli, 2018). Due to absence of age-appropriate contents for theirliteracy and grade levels, they have been exposed to materials which were originally designed
for teaching Turkish to adult international students (Bulut et al., 2018; Eren, 2019; Nimer,2019). This in turn has caused an outcry among the teachers for removing refugee students
from mainstream classes until they develop L2 proficiency (Bulut et al., 2018; Celik, 2019;
Celik et al., 2021; Taskin & Erdemli, 2018). Since 2019-2020 academic year, refugee students
who scored less than 60% on the Turkish proficiency exam have thus been receiving 24 hours
of remedial language education besides six-hour arts and sports courses (DG NEAR, 2020).
An initial evaluation of adaptation classes has still indicated that refugee learners’ major
problems with instructional materials and teacher competences remain unresolved (Bozan &Celik, 2021). To make matters worse, separation from their native-speaking peers have not
only reduced the opportunities to use the target language for authentic communication anddevelop social relationships, but also increased the prevalence of disruptive behaviour inrefugee-only classes and negative labelling at school (Bozan & Celik, 2021; DG NEAR, 2020).
Examination of the very few existing studies of TSL coursebooks for refugee children has also
demonstrated how misconceived the adopted approach to L2 materials development could get.
Irrespective of whether Yunus Emre Institute’s four-book basic set for eleven-to-fifteen-yearolds (entitled, Turkce ogreniyorum [I am learning Turkish]), or PICTES’ three-book equivalent
for six-to-twelve-year-olds (entitled, Hayat boyu Turkce [Lifelong Turkish]) underwent
teacher-evaluation still only superficially, both materials were met with disapproval due to theincompatibility of their irrelevant and outdated content with the refugee students’ age and gradelevels (Alan & Alptekin, 2021; Bicer & Kilic, 2017). Perhaps more interestingly, greater
incorporation and positive representation of L2 (Turkish) culture were also recommended totheir authors by experts on mother-tongue instruction, who clearly viewed second and foreign
language learning as identical (e.g. Alan & Alptekin, 2021; Bicer & Kilic, 2017).
In essence, the education literature suggests that segregated schooling along with linguisticallyand culturally-inappropriate (if not actually assimilationist) materials should be more readily
held responsible for refugee students’ failure to learn the target language. However, teacher
self-reports alone may not provide objective evidence for evaluating the efficiency of a given
set of L2 materials in creating an inclusive and learning-friendly environment (ILFE) for
refugee learners. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate whether and to what extent
TSL and ESL reading materials, locally produced and used for refugee education in Turkey

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and New Zealand, include all children with different levels of language proficiency, gender
identities and cultural backgrounds by using corpus-driven methods. The following researchquestions were addressed:•••

How do TSL reading materials for refugee learners compare with their ESL
counterparts in terms of grammatical and lexical complexity?
How do TSL reading materials for refugee learners compare with their ESL
counterparts in terms of gender equity?
How do TSL reading materials for refugee learners compare with their ESL
counterparts in terms of cultural equity?
MethodIn this multimethod study, where the text data was transformed into frequency and percentage
distributions, comparative corpus-based analyses of grammatical and lexical complexity wereconducted solely on outliers, and content analyses of verbal and nonverbal inputs from TSL
and ESL reading materials were also performed for the purpose of assessing their degree ofinclusivity (Morse, 2003).
Data Collection
For comparison purposes, five narratives (CEFR-A1) (entitled, Acil [A&E], Kayıp bavul [Lostluggage], Saklambac [Hide-and-seek], Bisiklet [The bike], and Her zamanki kafede [At theusual café]) with an average of 762.2 words were selected among TSL reading materials
prepared by PICTES (2021) project team for third-grade adaptation classes. As it corresponded
to year 4/level 2 in the New Zealand curriculum, five thematically similar texts at gold level(entitled, A gift for Aunty Nga, Breakdown, Always great, never late!, No big deal, and The
Green Team) with an average of 790.2 words were chosen from the Ministry of Education’s
Ready-to-Read and Junior Journal series (MoE, 2009). The qualitative data for gender andculture-based comparisons was therefore derived from a total of ten texts, whereas two sets ofshort and long-outlying texts (i.e. Acil [A&E] and Her zamanki kafede [At the usual café] vs.
A gift for Aunty Nga and The Green Team) were purposively selected from TSL and ESL
reading materials to comprise the corpus for grammatical and lexical complexity analyses dueto the illuminative power of extreme case sampling (Patton, 2002).
Data Analysis
During grammatical complexity analysis, the two sets of short and long-outlying texts werefirst divided into T-units (i.e. one main clause with any number of subordinate clauses),
subordinate clauses (i.e. adjectival, adverbial, nominal and non-finite types) and sentences
marked by full stops. Then, three complexity ratios were calculated by dividing: total numberof words by total number of T-units (W/T), total number of clauses by total number of T-units(C/T) and total number of T-units by total number of sentences (T/S) to compare TSL and ESL
reading materials in terms of T-unit length, subordination and coordination use respectively(Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). During lexical complexity analysis, four lists of verb items in
total were compiled for TSL and ESL outliers. After the identification of infrequent verbs that
do not appear on two different frequency lists of first 50 verbs and 2500 most common words
in Turkish and English, two (type/token) lexical complexity ratios were calculated by dividing:total number of verb types by total number of verbs (VT/V) and total number of sophisticated59

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verb types by total number of verbs (SVT/V) to compare TSL and ESL reading materials interms of verb variation and verb sophistication (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998).
In addition to comparisons against grammatical and lexical complexity measures, all verbal
and nonverbal texts were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine how
gender and culturally-responsive these ten storybooks were. Following established criteria
from the literature (e.g. Bag & Bayyurt, 2015; Goyal & Rose, 2020; Lee, 2014b; Lee & Chin,2021), frequency counts were carried out for the number of: male and female characters intexts, male and female protagonists, unnamed and anonymous characters, male and female
proper names, familial roles associated with men and women, occupational roles associatedwith men and women, male and female appearances in illustrations, and male and femaledominated images (i.e. with only men or women, and with more men or women) during theanalysis of gender representations. For the comparison of their cultural contents, Cortazzi and
Jin’s (1999) patterns of cultural representation were employed. After the textual and visualelements referring to the learners’ source cultures and their target-language culture (i.e. Turkish
and English) were counted, frequencies and percentages of occurrence were tabulated
appropriately. The overall percentage agreement was calculated as 93% for clause-verb
identification and 94% for gender-culture identification within Miles and Huberman’s (1994)
acceptable range.
Results and Discussion
For the purpose of determining how closely the current materials matched TSL and ESL
learners’ proficiency levels, the shortest and longest texts from each corpus were subjected togrammatical and lexical analyses. Comparisons between T-unit lengths and ratios of T-unit
complexity and sentence coordination revealed in Table 1 that despite having an almost equal
number of words, ESL texts not only employed fewer and longer T-units (W/T=6.49-7.41) but
they also made greater use of clause complexing (C/T=0.20-0.22) and coordinated sentences(T/S=1.17-1.42) to achieve cohesion in eight to nine-year-olds’ readings. TSL texts, on theother hand, proved easier than their ESL counterparts because their T-unit lengths (W/T=3.844.28) as well as subordination (C/T=0.03) and coordination (T/S=1.06-1.11) ratios fell outside
the specified range of all three measures of grammatical complexity; that is, being below theaverage of 6.0 words and 1.07 clauses per T-unit for the lowest levels and 1.2 T-units per
sentence at all levels (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). Within groups, both outliers also varied
only slightly in terms of T-unit complexity and sentence coordination, thereby ensuring
uniformity in grammatical complexity.
Another determinant of complexity related to the range and utility of verbs, besides repertoire
size, inputted by TSL and ESL texts. Table 1 also presented the findings from comparative
lexical analyses against two different type/token ratios. The initial comparison by the total
number of verb items might have suggested the superiority of TSL narratives over ESL ones.
However, the higher proportion of verb types to overall verbs indicated that ESL texts
generated more verb types (VT/V=0.32-0.46) in either case, and were capable of exposing L2
learners to more varied lexical input. A further comparison by their selection of high-frequency
verbs demonstrated that the materials writers paid almost equal attention to providing thirdgraders with the most useful vocabulary. TSL outliers covered 52-66% of first 50 verbs in the
Turkish National Corpus (TNC) and 11-15% of 455 verbs listed among the most frequent 2500
words in Turkish, whereas ESL outliers covered 48-66% of first 50 verbs in the New General
Service List (new-GSL) and 9.5-11% of 558 verbs listed among the most frequent 2500 words
in English (Aksan et al., 2017; Brezina & Gablasova, 2015; TNC, 2022). Therefore, both60

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corpora displayed a similar tendency to fluctuate only mildly between 0.03-0.04 (based on afrequency list of 2500 most common words in Turkish and English) and 0.16-0.18 (based on afrequency list of 50 most common verbs in Turkish and English) sophisticated verb types perverb, while the short ESL outlier turned out to have both more verb types (VT/V=0.46) andmore sophisticated verbs than the others (SVT/T=0.07-0.28). Since larger ratios on verb
variation and sophistication measures are identified as indicators of greater lexical proficiency,
the short ESL outlier, despite also being the most concise of all, can be claimed to embody thegreatest lexical complexity (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998).
Table 1Comparisons Between TSL and ESL Texts on Grammatical and Lexical Complexity Measures
Outlying texts

TSL

ESL

Measures

Shortest

LongestShortest

LongestWords (W)

682

869

660

870

Clauses (C)

5

7

18

30

T-units (T)

159

226

89

134

Sentences (S)

149

202

76

94

W/T

4.28

3.84

7.41

6.49

C/T

0.03

0.03

0.20

0.22

T/S

1.06

1.11

1.17

1.42

Verb types (VT)

56

78

63

69

Sophisticated VT (SVTa)

6 (30)

11 (45)

10 (39)10 (36)

Verbs (V)

164

248

135

214

VT/V

0.34

0.31

0.46

0.32

SVT/V

0.03 (0.18) 0.04 (0.18) 0.07 (0.28) 0.04 (0.16)

aUnbracketed figures show infrequent verbs that are not listed among the most frequent 2500 words in the
TNC/new-GSL. Bracketed figures show infrequent verbs that are not listed among the first 50 verbs in the
TNC/new-GSL.

Previous research on the influence of different complexity measures over text difficulty has
also shown that lexical complexity was a more definitive factor than syntactic complexity inestimating the comprehensibility of simplified and authentic materials for especially beginninglearners, and materials providers were recommended to select appropriate readings on the basisof word frequency lists, or in other words, tune difficulty level according to their use of less ormore sophisticated words rather than of shorter or longer sentences (Arya et al., 2011; Barrot,
2013; Mehrpour & Riazi, 2004; Nouri & Zerhouni, 2018). For this reason, one can conclude
that both collections would benefit from extension with further readings embodying greater
lexical diversity, if they were to cater for relatively more proficient readers among refugee
third-graders, whose mother tongue literacy can also vary widely given adequate, limited or no61

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prior schooling. There is, however, another aspect of ESL materials that might result in more
inclusion. Unlike text-only TSL materials, their free online texts are accompanied by audio
versions, so that students with different learning styles and/or (dis)abilities can equally enjoy
the stories through different mediums.
In addition to the grammar and lexicon, all verbal and nonverbal texts were examined in termsof gendered representations to ascertain whether the materials really catered to the needs ofgirls and boys equally. As shown in Table 2, male characters (57-58%) outnumbered female
characters (42-43%) in both learning situations, and the difference was even greater when it
came to hero-making, especially in TSL texts (m=76%; f=25%). A closer look at TSL texts
provided that male characters with prestigious jobs (e.g. managers, doctors) engaged in
occupational (e.g. having company meetings, delegating tasks), purchasing (e.g. gifting,ordering food and drinks, sponsoring family trips) and mobility (e.g. cycling, driving, flying)activities, whereas female characters were stereotyped as housebound housewives cooking,cleaning, sewing and tending, or objects of pity (e.g. six-year-old girl with a broken leg whining
for mum), desire (e.g. Romanian beauty captivating her future husband at the lost property
office) and ridicule (e.g. clumsy stewardess spilling cherry juice all over male senior shirt
manufacturer) due to physical and psychological features potentially common to both sexes.
Conversely, ESL texts tried promoting equity between fictional characters and occasionally
depicted role models as humans equally skilled at domestic tasks (e.g. the boy sometimes
getting her breakfast and checking up on his mother) and equipped with intellectual and moral
virtues (e.g. Mr. Marlow frowning at misplaced crayons in the classroom while Gemma
knowing from her brother’s experience, noticing Cody’s problem and helping them both withcolour-blindness).
Despite equality in anonymity (m=60%; f=40%), ESL texts (m=56%; f=44%) also differedfrom TSL ones (m=48%; f=52%) in using more masculine than feminine names. At firstglance, it might appear that TSL texts had a more even distribution of familial roles probably
due to the curricular emphasis placed on the teaching of Turkish kinship terms. But all in all,women in both materials (58-83%) were more often designated as mother or wife and theprimary caregiver. In line with this archaic gender role, women in TSL texts were
underrepresented as people in employment (m=52%; f=48%) and assigned low-paying and/or
female-stereotyped service jobs (e.g. hairdressing, seamstressing, teaching, clerking). ESL
texts, on the other hand, linked female characters to a greater number (m=43%; f=57%) andvariety of occupational roles (e.g. courier, model, garden centre owner). They also insinuatedthe increasing presence of single working mothers, who, besides breadwinning, could copewith multitasking (e.g. shopping, driving kids around, handling car issues and physical work)and get identified with extraordinariness by their male only-children. As evidenced in Table 2
by the higher concentration of female character appearances and female-dominated images(56-58%), women in ESL materials can be concluded to have better visibility than those in
TSL materials (33-37%). In addition to illustrating more women than men, ESL materials cared
more about equal sharing of the visual realm. Two same and mixed-gender pairs (e.g. Ara-her
mother, Lucca-his grandfather, Nico-his gran, Shai-her father) were once picturised cooking
together to win the culinary competition between schools. TSL materials still managed to
downplay women’s agency in the storyline by either removing from display, or depicting themnegatively as the weaker sex, fanning oneself faintly, leaning on husband’s shoulder, or pulling
father’s shirt even in female-dominated images.

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Table 2Comparisons Between TSL and ESL Texts on Gender Equity Measures
Modea

TSL

ESL

VerbalIndicatorsam

VisualfmVerbalfmVisualf

Characters

1511(58%) (42%)16
12(57%) (43%)

Protagonists

93(76%) (25%)97(56%) (44%)

Unnamed characters

64(60%) (40%)(60%) (40%)

Proper names

1213(48%) (52%)108(56%) (44%)

Familial roles

5981(42%) (58%)1677(17%) (83%)

Occupational roles

1110(52%) (48%)68(43%) (57%)

6

m

f

4

Total character
appearances

33
19(63%) (37%)56
76(42%) (58%)

Gender-dominant
images126(67%) (33%)12
15(44%) (56%)

m: male; f: female

The comparisons against gender equity measures have therefore shown that the desired balance
between the genders could be achieved in neither case. Although ESL materials overall seemedto adopt a more progressive worldview more visually than verbally, they cooperated with TSL
counterparts in the imposition of male supremacy mainly through use of male overpopulation,negative stereotypes and character designation by domestic and professional roles. Regardlessof the culture they were produced for and by, whether western, non-western, or westernised, aplethora of learning materials for different subject areas and grade levels was similarly foundto embody imbalances in linguistic and nonlinguistic inputs and criticised for reinforcing andlegitimising gender inequality in the 21st century classroom, which should instead be working
towards the goal of education for all (Barton & Sakwa, 2012; Brugeilles & Cromer, 2009;
Goyal & Rose, 2020; Lee, 2014a). In three other studies, which investigated the genderednessof textual and visual content presented by primary English coursebooks locally produced in
China and Turkey, disparities in female-to-male appearances, men’s occupational choices andwomen’s engagement in housework likewise continued to plague different editions, andnotwithstanding small improvements in familial roles and imagery, latent sexism could still berecognised (Bag & Bayyurt, 2015; Lee, 2014b; Lee & Chin, 2021). As a result, it is not too farfetched to predict that the gender gap will worsen, let alone close, particularly for refugee girls

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Volume 10 – Issue 1 – 2022with increased vulnerability to school dropout, forced marriage and gender-based violence.
Consequently, modifications made to materials design and actual use should go beyond thecosmetic level. Active engagement in gender awareness raising should also be maintained
across the curriculum by all stakeholders, parents, teachers, teacher educators and educational
authorities.
Table 3Comparisons Between TSL and ESL Texts on Cultural Equity Measures
Mode

TSL
Verbala

ESL
VisualVerbalVisualIndicatorsa

C2

C1

C2

C1

C2

C1

C2

C1

Cultural elements

51
(69%)

23
(31%)

12
(71%)

5
(29%)

40
(48%)

44
(52%)

18
(29%)

45
(71%)

C2: target culture; C1: source cultures.

Ultimately, the cultural contents of TSL and ESL materials underwent comparative analysis so
as to discover to what extent they included children with diverse cultural backgrounds.
According to Table 3, ESL texts can be claimed to have a more pluralistic composition bothverbally and visually due to the larger proportion of elements referring to the learners’ own
cultures (C1=52-71%). As to whose culture(s) received more focus in the multiculturalclassrooms of New Zealand, Maori culture, of the largest minority, predominated, andparticularly, Rarotongan life was foregrounded in the narrative, A gift for Aunty Nga. ESL texts
were also distinguished by the fact that they provided information not only on a wider range ofcultural products; that is, local geography (e.g. Cook Islands, white-sand beaches), animals(e.g. hermit-crabs, shells), food (e.g. coconuts, pineapples), clothes and accessories (e.g. floral
shirts, flower garlands), along with musical instruments (e.g. ukuleles), but also on cultural
practices and the more implicit perspectives, such as saying karakia, prayers before meals,
tivaevae, quilt-making in women’s groups, and gift-giving as a show of love, honour andrespect. No reference was actually made to the home (Arab) culture of Syrian refugees, butother immigrant groups were amply represented especially in the Green Team, where Greek,
Indian, Italian, Kurdish and Samoan schoolmates presented their own traditional dishes (e.g.
bhaji, palusami, spanakopita) prepared with the New Zealandian silverbeet from school garden.
In an apparent effort to promote social cohesion, ESL materials also used images of ethnically
mixed communities and classrooms, while they tended to represent the target-language cultureelements (C2=29-48%) in the verbal mode; that is, through proverbs (e.g. place for everything,and everything in its place), riddles (e.g. When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar), idioms(e.g. oldie but goodie), place names (e.g. Auckland) and sports (e.g. cricket).
For TSL materials, the reverse was true. The target-language culture elements (C2=69-71%),
consisting of a full list of Istanbul’s top attractions (e.g. Grand Bazaar, Hagia Sophia), popularholiday destinations (e.g. Bodrum, Marmaris), local specialties (e.g. Turkish breakfast) and thecustom of tea and coffee drinking, outweighed those of the learners’ source cultures (C1=2931%). More precisely, there were cursory mentions of different nonnative groups, that is, theirnationalities (e.g. Japanese), countries (e.g. Germany), place names (e.g. Ottawa). But Syrian
refugees’ home (Arab) culture was most stereotypically personified with the male protagonist’s(e.g. Sharif Zakaria from Cairo) physicality; that is, his complexion, facial features and hair64

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type, standing in sharp contrast to his female counterpart (e.g. Monica from Bucharest) at
Istanbul airport. This was possibly because adopting a tourist’s perspective and representing
culture solely in terms of more tangible and less sensitive topics such as food and travel could
seem easier or even safer to materials writers and producers, and more appealing to younger
readers, despite concerns about materials-induced prejudice and superficial learning (Simsek,
2018; Yuen, 2011). Independent of the type of learning context (TSL/ESL), coursebook origin(local/global), educational level (primary/tertiary) and goal-orientation (for general/specificpurposes), many different L2 materials had also been reported to simply concentrate ontransmitting surface knowledge of target-language culture elements and blamed for robbing
increasingly diverse classrooms of opportunities to encounter new language in culturallyrelevant contexts (Basal et al., 2014; Huang, 2019; Pashmforoosh & Babaii, 2015; Rai & Deng,
2016; Shin et al., 2011; Tum et al., 2012).
There is now a growing consensus that due to the centrality of cultural content to language
comprehension and meaningful output production, materials should be made to contain not justthe local culture, including the students’ own experience, their school, family and community
to relate to, reflect on and explain to others but also cultural features outside their world, fromvarious countries in order for the learners to eventually “maintain an equal, mutually-respectful
relationship” with the global community (Forman, 2014; Matsuda, 2012, p. 177; McGrath,
2002; Toledo-Sandoval, 2020). In the case of refugee learners, already struggling with multiple
hardships, such as discrimination, insecurity, and poverty, integration of their native language
and culture into the L2 classroom has indeed become of prime importance in lowering theaffective filter and scaffolding their L2 learning. As a result, the cultural content of TSL
materials needed serious expansion in terms of both depth and breadth so as to engage rather
than alienate Syrian refugee students, whereas the culturally more diverse ESL materials had
still room for improvement for minority representation.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Corpus-based comparative analyses of grammatical and lexical complexity as well as genderand cultural equity revealed that despite both being far from achieving the ideal composition
for creating an ILFE, TSL reading materials for refugee children were lagging further behind
their ESL counterparts in all three respects. Both kinds of materials depended on almost
uniform sets of easy-to-read narratives predominantly embodying simpler grammaticalfeatures and high-frequency words, and thus needed extension with relatively elaborate ones
inputting more sophisticated verbs to accommodate mixed-ability classes. Gender disparities
were institutionalised typically through male overrepresentation in hero-making, negative
stereotyping, familial and occupational identification, and engagement in monetary andmobility activities, but occasionally ameliorated, in the ESL case, by reversing conventionallygendered domestic, technical and intellectual skills in texts and images. The widest gap
between TSL and ESL materials was still observed in cultural representations because theformer, written from a tourist’s perspective, focused on imposing superficial knowledge oftarget-culture elements, and conversely, the latter on ensuring relevance through greater use ofelements from the students’ diverse cultures.
The proposed modifications to the composition of the current materials may simply require
more egalitarian choices of lexicogrammatical, gendered and cultured contents, but their merits
are twofold. Increasing variety and thus ensuring relevance for all may cost L2 practitioners
less effort than maintaining discipline in diverse classrooms. The longstanding strategy ofdifferentiation can support all other students, but will probably mean the world to refugee

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children, who desperately need something to hold onto amidst a sea of unknowns. In the longrun, the joint effort to break language barriers can also be paid back with academic andworkplace success on the part of refugees, and with social harmony and peace on the part ofhost countries. Cowart, Lanford, and Beatty (2011), too, pointed out that educators do know
how to teach all students successfully, and in providing newcomers with appropriate
instruction, they can influence a quality of life both refugee families and the American society
will enjoy. In terms of such transformative power, not many learning mediums can be argued
to exist comparable to the L2 teacher and textbook.
However, this study concentrated on corpus-based comparative analysis of two sets of locally
produced extensive reading materials for third-grade refugee learners. Since storytelling was
assumed to promote gender and cultural-awareness raising, non-fiction texts were not includedin the corpus. The size of the corpus (ten narratives), language level (basic) and focus on
extreme cases (short and long-outlying texts) during analyses of lexical and grammaticalcomplexity could be listed among its other limitations. Given dire predictions about climateforced displacement, environmental migrants may contribute to the new majority in futureclassrooms. Consequently, L2 practitioners as agents of change should be empowered to build
community resilience through increased social cohesion between added varieties. Future
researchers are finally recommended to focus on devising a guiding framework for bothdesigning and evaluating inclusive materials, developing teachers’ gender and culturalawareness, and expanding their repertoire of materials adaptation strategies and plurilingual
activities.

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Corresponding author: Meliha R. Simsek
Email: malliday@gmail.com

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