Source Culture and Target Culture in English Language Teaching: A Study of Intercultural Pragmatics and Students’ Learning Outcomes

Abstract

The study explores the role of intercultural pragmatics in theimprovement of students’ reading comprehension of English. This is anexperimental research conducted upon 50 eighth-grade Pashtun studentsaged around 12 and 13 years. The experimental group (n=25) was taughtan intercultural curriculum which included topics from the British culture(target culture) and Pashtun culture (source culture) in addition to theform of language. The control group (n=25) was treated traditionally inwhich the focus was on the structure and form of language. The pre- andpost-tests were administered to both groups. After comparing the meanscores of the tests, it has been found that the experimental group showedgreater improvement in their English language proficiency as comparedto the control group. It is recommended that topics from both the sourceand target cultures written in the target language be included in theEnglish curriculum. Further, training programs for language teachersshould include intercultural pragmatics in their syllabi. Further researchmay be conducted in the same area in different places with participantsfrom different cultures and age groups.