Investigating EFL teachers’ perceptions of teaching English proverbs in EFL classes: A cross-cultural study

Abstract

Emerging from the experiences of a specific society, proverbs commonly mirror certain cultural signs of the traditions, beliefs, and values of that society. This appears as one of the ways of teaching the target culture through building intercultural connections in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Correspondingly, this study reserves two aims: First, to investigate the perceptions of Turkish EFL teachers on teaching English proverbs for intercultural relations and the frequency of using English proverbs in EFL classes and second, to examine the ideas of English native-speaker language teachers residing in Turkey about the intercultural role of learning and using proverbs in learning Turkish. To that end, 65 English teachers participated in a likert-scale pattern of two questionnaires and 4 native English lecturers were e-mail interviewed. The data collected from the participants is analysed and described related to the qualitative and quantitative research procedure of the instruments. The study revealed that for culture teaching in EFL classes, teachers favoured teaching proverbs and they believed that teaching proverbs was effective in improving learners’ language skills, grammar and vocabulary learning in learning an L2. As a second finding, native English lecturers were also positive towards learning Turkish proverbs as cultural connectors. Hence, the study accentuates the realization that proverbs can be effectively employed in teaching culture and evoking cultural relations between native language and the target language, plus in improving L2 skills and studies.