Teachers’ and Learners’ Attitudes towards Culture and Culture Learning in a Turkish Context
Abstract
In the field of ELT, the undeniable relationship between language and culture has always been a focus of attention from a variety of perspectives. Sociologists, anthropologists and naturally applied linguists have tried to understand whether cultural aspects of L2 scaffold or interfere in much the way where other types of contrasting linguistic systems do. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate teachers’ and EFL learners’ perspectives on understanding of ‘culture’; attitudes towards culture teaching; the cultural topics they favour to teach/learn in the classroom; time allocation to culture teaching/learning and finally their attitudes towards intercultural communicative competence. The data were collected through a Likert type questionnaire in which Turkish teachers of English and Turkish university students were asked questions to respond with the purpose of finding the importance of cultural aspects in learning the target language. The analysed results show encouraging signs for changing the perception of cultural teaching by some sound evidence provided by the participants of the study.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Allen, W. (1985). Toward cultural proficiency. In A.C. Omaggio (Ed.), Proficiency, curriculum, articulation: The ties that bind (pp. 137-166). Middlebury, VT: Northeast Conference.
Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT Journal
(1), 57-64. DOI: 10.1093/elt/56.1.57
Atay, D. (2005). Reflections on the cultural dimension of language teaching. Language and Intercultural Communication, 5(3, 4), 222-237. DOI:10.1080/14708470508668897
Atay, D., Kurt, G., Çamlıbel, Z., Ersin, P, & Kaslıoğlu, Ö. (2005). The Role of Intercultural Competence in Foreign Language Teaching. Inonu University Journal of the Faculty of Education. Special Issue. 10(3), 123-135. Retrieved on June 7, 2014 from: http://www.acarindex.com/dosyalar/makale/acarindex-1423903323.pdf
Bada, E. (2000). Culture in ELT. Cukurova University Journal of Social Sciences (6), 100-110. Retrieved on June 7, 2014 from: http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/cusosbil/article/view/5000000885/5000001576
Bayyurt, Y. (2000). Are your students cross-culturally capable?: Teaching of culture in EFL classrooms. In D. Köksal & I. H. Erten (eds.), Conference Proceedings (pp. 27-30). First International ELT Research Conference. Çanakkale, Turkey.
Byrd, D. (2014). Learning to Teach Culture in the L2 Methods Course. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 76–89. Retrieved on June 7, 2014 from:
http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v11n12014/byrd.pdf
Canale, M.; Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics. 1(1): 1–47. DOI: 10.1093/applin/I.1.1
Castro, P., Sercu, L. & Garcia, M. C. M. (2004). Integrating language-and-culture teaching: an investigation of Spanish teachers' perceptions of the objectives of foreign language education. Intercultural Education, 15(1), 91-104. DOI: 10.1080/1467598042000190013
Council of Europe (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Genc, B. & Bada, E. (2005). Culture in language learning and teaching. The Reading Matrix. 5 (1): 73-84. Retrieved on June 7, 2014 from: http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/genc_bada/article.pdf
Han, Hui (2010). An Investigation of Teachers Perceptions of Culture Teaching in Secondary Schools in Xinjiang, China. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/109/
Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers. Ann Ardor: University of Michigan Press.
Lafayette, R. (1975). The cultural revolution in foreign languages: A guide for building the modern curriculum. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.
Lazar, I. (Ed). (2001) Incorporating intercultural communicative competence in pre and in-service language teacher training. Strasbourg: European Centre for Modern Languages, Council of Europe Publishing.
Lessard-Clouston, M. (1996). Chinese teachers' views of culture in their EFL learning and Teaching. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 9(3), 197-224. Retrieved on June 5, 2014 from: http://www.academia.edu/824949/Chinese_Teachers_Views_of_Culture_in_their_EFL_Learning_and_Teaching
Liddicot A.J. (2004). Conceptualization of the cultural component of language teaching in Australian language in education policy. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25, 297-317. DOI: 10.1080/01434630408666534
McLeod, B. (1976). The relevance of anthropology to language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 10(2), 211-220. DOI: 10.2307/3585642
Montgomery, M., & Reid-Thomas, H. (1994). Language and Social Life. England: The British Council.
Sarıçoban, A. & Çalışkan, G. (2011). The influence of target culture on language learners. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 7(1). Retrieved on June 7, 2014 from: http://www.jlls.org/index.php/jlls/article/view/101/101.
Savignon, S. (1972). Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign language testing. Philadelphia: Centre for Curriculum Development.
Seelye, H. (1974). Teaching culture: Strategies for foreign language educators. Skokie, IL: National Textbook Company.
Sercu, L. (2002). Implementing intercultural foreign language education. Belgian, Danish and British teachers’ professional self-concepts and teaching practices. Evaluation and Research in Education, 16(3), 150-165. Retrieved on June 11, 2014 from: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/108892/1/Implementing+Intercultural+Foreign+Language+Education_Sercu.pdf
Sercu, L., Bandura, E., Castro, P., Davcheva, L., Laskaridou, C., Lundgren, U., Mendez GarcÃa, M., & Ryan, P. (2005). Foreign language teachers and Intercultural Competence: An international investigation. Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education, 10. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Smith, L. (1976). English as an international auxiliary language. RELC Journal, 7(2), 38-43. doi: 10.1177/003368827600700205
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
ISSN 1305-578X (Online)
Copyright © 2005-2022 by Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies