The development of religious characters and local wisdom in an English
textbook is an effort to develop students’ English competence without
ignoring their religious values and culture in English communication. The
purpose of this current study is to design an EFL teaching textbook based
on religious characters and local wisdom that can be appropriately used
for Islamic higher education at Universitas Islam Negeri Imam Bonjol
Padang, Indonesia. Research and Development type was used to design
the textbook in four stages, namely, need analysis, designing textbook, try�out, and textbook revision. The observation, questionnaires, and interviews
were used to collect the data. The findings revealed that textbook
development resulted in eight chapters with the various themes of religious
characters and local wisdom. Each chapter consists of English skills
including listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar. The results
of the textbook validations from four English language experts and
learners revealed that the score was 3.53 (88.5%) within the interval of 1
to 4 and it is sorted out into a ‘strongly agree’ category. The textbook
based on religious characters and local wisdom provides the students with
particular challenges to respond or communicate while exploring their
local cultures and practices. To find out the effectiveness of that textbook,
it is recommended that an experimental study should be conducted by
future researchers.
Keywords: English textbook, religious characters, local wisdom, English
as a Foreign Language (EFL).