Tertiary level EFL teachers’ opinions and preferences about cultural instruction in foreign language education

Year 2018, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 125 - 145, 30.09.2018

Nalan Bayraktar Balkır

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to explore a group of English language
teachers’ opinions and preferences about cultural instruction at tertiary
level. This study, which adopted a qualitative research design, was carried out
with 10 English language teachers in the English Preparatory Programme at a
state university in Turkey.  In order to
collect data, an open-ended questionnaire was designed and administered to the
participants. The data were analysed qualitatively, and some patterns were
discovered from the respondents’ answers. The analysis of the data indicated
that all the participants have positive opinions about culture teaching because
they believe culture and language are inseparable. It was also found out that
most of the participants support the instruction of cultural products like
food, family, music, holiday and so forth, but they did not mention other
dimensions of culture such as practices and perspectives in culture teaching.
Another finding of the study was that participants mostly focus on British
culture in their teaching; however, only a few of them have a multicultural
approach to the teaching of culture. Finally, all the participants reported
that they need training on cultural instruction. In the light of these
findings, this study offers some suggestions for further research and points to
some important implications for both in-service and pre-service foreign language
education. 

Keywords

Cultural instruction, foreign language education

References

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