Abstract
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, in its current Curriculum Standards for high school English, emphasizes the development of Japanese EFL learners’ attitudes towards cross-cultural understanding. The present research aims to provide insights to enhance learners’ interaction skills in fostering cross-cultural understanding. Drawing on prior findings on government-approved textbooks and learner-native speaker interaction, two studies were conducted: one on written dialogue models in textbooks and another on authentic spoken interactions where topics related to the interlocutors’ cultural backgrounds were discussed. Study One investigates the design of dialogues in textbooks. The results indicate that these dialogues often rely excessively on a question-answer pair format, causing them to appear as contrived, formal interviews based on simplified categories of nationalities. Study Two examines face-to-face, spontaneous conversations between Japanese EFL learners and native English speakers from the United Kingdom. The results reveal that while question-answer pairs are also prevalent in these naturally-occurring exchanges, learners tend to be less reactive when listening and less coherent or collaborative in topic management. These findings offer implications for the future development of teaching materials.
https://ror.org/059d6yn51 
