MOVING BEYOND LANGUAGE: AWARENESS OF EFL LEARNERS IN TARGET LANGUAGE CULTURE

Devrim Hol,Ali Erarslan

doi:10.12955/cbup.v3.620

Abstract

What students in EFL classes think and feel about the target language culture has always been in a great domain for all teachers and other stakeholders. It is always a great concern, whether or not learners accept and absorb the target language. They may find it useless or unnecessary, even though the course books or classroom activities exposed them to it. This study reports on the measures on the perceptions of Turkish EFL Learners toward the target language culture. It examines the meaning of culture; whether it is important to have knowledge and information on the target language culture; and the advantages and drawbacks of learning the target language culture to make the questions in the minds clear. The study involved 20 EFL learners at a university in Turkey. It used in-depth interviews with the participants, and attempted to identify the learner’s perceptions concerning the target culture. The research results show that the participants’ perceptions on the target culture vary greatly.

Highlights

Target Language learning is a process that includes the grammatical and communicative aspects of a language and the culture, which represents and gives a lively function of the target language
It is a sum of traditions, behaviors, ideas, and language elements, how people speak and behave. It builds the structure of a society.” (Participant 3) The participants tried to reflect their perceptions of culture from a window that has never been in that culture but just exposed to in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, as none of the participants had never been abroad or an English-speaking country, so they were hesitant to define and reflect their ideas deeply
The results show that while the learners have a positive perception on the target language culture, they have a more traditional perception on their own culture and think that learning a new culture may hamper their perceptions on the local one

Summary

Introduction

Target Language learning is a process that includes the grammatical and communicative aspects of a language and the culture, which represents and gives a lively function of the target language. In a country far from the target language used, it is a challenge to many learners to acquire the target culture along with the target language, without living in that culture. They try to obtain “chunks” of that culture from the course book in a classroom, surrounded by four walls, or classroom activities, where the teachers try to give clues about the target culture. A new pedagogy, including a wide range of domains outside the only language itself, the most important of which is culture, is a must in the new world in which the countries and cultures are for the first time hand in hand

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