HOW LIKELY IS IT TO TEACH CULTURE IN EFL COURSES? - THE CASE OF PRIVATE AND STATE SCHOOL TEACHERS IN TURKEY

Abstract

With the recognition of English as a Lingua Franca, intercultural communication has gained great importance. As a result, culture teaching has become an indispensable component of EFL classrooms. Even though there has been extensive research on the attitudes of EFL teachers towards culture teaching, few studies were found bringing attention to the differences between private and state school teachers to this end. The purpose of this research is therefore to shed light on private and state school EFL teachers’ attitudes towards culture teaching, their classroom practices, and the obstacles they come across upon this. The participants are 72 EFL teachers (32 state, 32 private) working at different institutions in Turkey. The data were collected employing a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that both private and state school teachers have positive attitudes towards culture incorporation in their lessons. However, private school EFL teachers were proven to have more positive opinions about culture teaching. The findings also indicated that both private and state school EFL teachers integrate culture into their lessons to some extent. However, both groups reported some obstacles that they come across while teaching culture. The details are further discussed and the implications are made in the article.
 
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